


Chapter 4-The Tri-state Olympiad of Science

by Sketchpad



Series: The Mysteries Of Marcie Fleach [4]
Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (TV 2010)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-01-17 13:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1389457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sketchpad/pseuds/Sketchpad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not having Velma by her side in this year's Olympiad, Marcie decides not to compete. But when this year's competitors are kidnappped and replaced with cunning riddles, Marcie will find out that this Olympiad is not only challenging, but deadly...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A heavy fog flowed in from the warm, Californian waters, shrouding the dark shipping docks of Crystal Cove, which were now abandoned of workers in the quiet evening.

Within the rented interior of Warehouse Number Eight, one of the largest properties that served the docks, lights burned on and activity reigned.

Welders and engineers cut, probed, studied and carefully were assembling sections of steely sheet work that looked intriguingly humanoid, as though they were erecting a statue.

Safely put aside in a corner of the warehouse were two finished halves of a hollow, metal head, sculpted and painted to resemble a dark-bearded, ruddy-nosed man with an arrogant and dangerous rise to his brow.

Sections of bent arm were being fitted together in the acrid, oxyacetylene light, while plating for the massive, bare torso were being machined and shaped into its final forms.

From the elevated office's walkway, high above the din of construction, Greenman observed everything that went on with focused satisfaction.

He pictured the eminent completion of this project and gave a smirk of secret contentment. The days were ticking down with every element of his private, long-ranging plan either successfully done or nearly so.

With a eager sigh, he knew that for the first time, in a very long time, his life was truly becoming nothing short of electric.

He had known sacrifice personally. It had shaped the very path of his life. His faith acknowledged it. His gods demanded it, and they had put him upon this chaotic world to work their will...and his own.

Thinking of them made his thoughts jump to their cryptic warning of that so-called "alchemist."

They had told him that her hand would make a way for him, and according to the local paper, her seemingly proactive mystery-solving had indeed made things considerably easier for him to acquire the T.H.R.O.B.A.C. ruins.

But that same hand could close upon him, they also warned, perhaps undoing everything he had put together.

He put away such troubling notions and considered. If he was right about who this "alchemist" was, if she was, indeed, the daughter of that stubborn, inconsequential, shop-keep of a businessman, then taking her measure would be an interesting diversion before she was finally put to death.

Greenman scanned over the work area and absently saw the already completed sign leaning against a far wall. A gaudily painted affair that read, "The Rolling Boulder."

He turned his attention from that upon hearing the footsteps of a well-dressed man, who approached, stopped, and quietly held up a leather briefcase.

The aide opened the case without speaking, allowing Greenman to peruse the contents with a pleased, leisurely air.

Seated deeply inside shaped depressions in a foam inlay were five fat, beautifully cut gems of various, subtle colors, that winked and shone from the interior lights above, and glowed from within with promised, eldritch power.

Smiling, Greenman finally gave voice to his anticipations.

"Soon," he quietly said.

* * *

The afternoon sun filtered and shone the through the Spanish Mission archways and windows of Crystal Cove High, illuminating the chattering throngs of students who moved through the hallways, and to their lockers, after attending their last class of the day.

On the various bulletin boards that hung about were pinned all manner of notices, reminders and events for all and sundry to see, but to Marcie Fleach, the only missive that she focused on morosely were the large, colorful posters that commanded their own places on the school walls.

Posters that boldly announced the arrival of this year's Tri-State Olympiad of Science.

From a nearby classroom, Jason Wyatt had waddled out onto the hall, and upon seeing Marcie staring at one of the posters, approached her.

"What's wrong, Marcie?" he asked from behind her. "You've been mopey all week."

Marcie glanced in Jason's direction, but didn't turn to acknowledge him, saying, "That's what I've always like about you, Jason. Your keen observational skills."

"Really?" Jason asked, brightening to this unexpected compliment, and failing to see the sarcasm underneath.

"No," Marcie deadpanned. "Look around."

Jason did as he was asked, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary, so he shrugged in response.

"Pretty much a normal day to me," he said, "Why? What's wrong?"

Marcie couldn't believe that such a self-declared scientist would not know what event was occurring this week. With a sigh, she turned to face Jason, and leaned back by the poster to rest.

"What's wrong is that the Olympiad is here," Marcie explained, ticking off the points with her fingers. "What's wrong is that the Olympiad doesn't allow solo competitors. What's wrong is that I hadn't finished any science projects to enter said Olympiad, but that's a moot point. See point two."

Marcie wistfully lifted her head to see the image that had so long filled her mind and, it appeared, her heart.

"And what's really wrong is...I still miss Velma," she admitted.

Jason watched the drama play out subtly in her eyes, then nodded his head in understanding.

"Oh. I miss her, too," he said, then decided to lighten the mood. It was the end of school for the day, after all. A good time of day, if ever there was any.

"How about we go over to Rude Pizza's. I've got some coupons, so I'll treat!" Jason offered.

Marcie berated herself inwardly. Her pining was having an immediate effect on her surroundings by bringing a friend down. She began to wonder if the saying, 'Misery loves company' could be proven and quantified into scientific terms. She certainly felt like there were grounds for further study.

"Thanks, Jason," she told him. "Sorry for being such an acid compound in the punchbowl. Tell you what. I have to check something out. Wait for me by the Clue Cruiser. I won't be long."

"Okay," Jason said, and then he left.

_'I won't be long,'_ she thought when he was gone. _'Before I met V, I would have said, "I won't_ belong _."_

Principal Quinlan could be seen walking briskly through the thinning crowds towards Marcie, and the teen began to wonder why she was suddenly so popular today.

Marcie nodded to the woman, saying, "Congratulations, Miss Quinlan. Crystal Cove High made it to the Olympiad again this year."

The principal gave a giddy laugh. "Oh, as if you didn't know! This is so exciting, and the school owes its entry this year to hard-working students like you. What I can't understand is why you would bow out this year, Marcie? Your grades are wonderful. More than good enough to qualify. What's wrong?"

Marcie stifled another sigh upon hearing another "What's wrong?" question again.

"Velma's not here, ma'am," Marcie said.

Quinlan, remembering Dinkley's sudden absence, nodded. "Oh, that's right. You two were our dream team for quite a while. Well, how about getting someone else to partner with you. Crystal Cove High has got its share of Mensa applicants around here. How about that boy you hang out with sometimes. Jason Wyatt?"

Marcie gave a weak smile. "No thanks, Principal Quinlan. It's too late to sign up, anyway, and Jason's not my type, uh, I mean, we...don't see eye-to-eye on what kind of science projects to work on."

If Quinlan had noticed Marcie's flustering faux pas, she made no indication. Instead, she let the subject drop.

"Well, okay, Marcie," she relented. "But if you want to cheer us on, they're having the Olympiad's commencement at the convention center downtown."

Marcie managed another weak, gracious smile. No sense in bringing her down with my rain clouds, she thought.

"Thanks, Miss Quinlan," Marcie said. "I might just come. It'll give me a chance to check out the new talent, there."

"All right, Marcie. We'll see you there. Bye."

"Bye, Miss Quinlan," said Marcie, watching her principal go.

'I'm purposely going to an Olympiad,' she thought. 'that I'm already feeling depressed over.'

She shook her head slowly as she stared at the event poster again, and wondered if, deep down, she was a true glutton for punishment.

* * *

Mystery Incorporated settled deeply in the plush, leatherette seating of the booth in the Oklahoma small town cafe that they agreed meet in.

For several days now, after the end of some successful cases, one or two members would spot, just from the corner of their perception, the shape of a man standing in the far shadows of doorways, of corners, of eaves.

The shape would change slightly in the space of a few sightings, being taller in some cases, slimmer in others, but always noticed just far enough to seem innocuous. And every attempt to screw up enough courage to pursue has ended with Mystery Inc. literally chasing shadows.

The bell over the opening front door heralded the entry of Shaggy and Scooby from outside. Both sat on the outer seating of the booth, and made their report to the others.

"Did you guys see him?" Fred asked.

"Me and Scoob just finished checking around the block," Shaggy said, plucking a danish from the communal table. "No sign of that shadow man, so far."

"That's the fifth time we caught him checking up on us," Fred muttered. "I thought it was nothing until we saw him again in Colorado. Do you think we're being followed, gang?"

Daphne, following Velma's lead in cautiously glancing out the broad cafe window, answered, "It's beginning to look like it. Do you think it has anything to do with Mr. E? Someone he might've sent to keep tabs on us?"

Scooby, watching the humans ponder, chewed on the question himself, and, finding no answers forthcoming, shrugged and said, "Rry got ruthin'."

"It sounds like it's a mystery _within_ our usual mysteries," Fred considered. "What do you think, Velma?" he asked, glancing over to the girl, who hadn't looked away from the window since Shaggy and Scooby's return.

Velma's eyes didn't dart or scan the parking lot and the surrounding street for anyone who fit her estimation of suspicious people. She had done that a while ago and found nothing to arouse that suspicion, so she spent her time now staring thoughtfully out into space.

In the time it took to span three states, their little road trip was becoming more and more intriguing with each new glimpse of this "shadow man," and she refused to believe that it had nothing to do with vulnerable Mystery Inc. being out on the road.

She considered Daphne's guess on the identity of the man's employer, as opposed to the man himself. Logically, it was a good place to start. It could be completely plausible that this mystery man was, indeed, a minion of Professor Harlan Ellison's.

Hadn't Ricky Owens, the first Mr. E, sent spies like Ed Machine, and even Marcie into their midst?

Ellison's own identity and past proved to be as cloaked as any shadow, at least until his recent confession of them. However, experience was forcing Velma not to dismiss her inquisitive feelings based on that admission alone, as she had at first blush, before leaving her home. His motivations and his seeming interest with her and her friends could be just as labyrinthine, just as inscrutable...and just as dark as the Evil Entity's.

Velma gave a quiet sigh. Thoughts were tumbling in her head like mis-matched socks in a dryer. Half-seen shadow man observations across three states, and unfinished investigations from their most recent case, not to mention, now troubling thoughts of possibly being lead around by the collective nose by a man whom she, admittedly, knew less than this universe's Marcie Fleach during one of her occasional and awkward web chats.

It felt too soon on her part to weigh in on a decision, but the gang needed the feedback.

"We _are_ being followed, guys," she finally said. "But I'll have to get back to you on whether or not Mr. E has anything to do with it."

* * *

Marcie calmly wondered if it was too late to sneak out and meet Jason at Rude Pizza, as she stood in the middle of the convention center ballroom, like an island of awkward boredom in a sea of educational networking and bittersweet memories.

Looking around, she saw, past the folding chairs for the invited guests and the open space in the room, seemingly set aside for the event's mass schmoozing, the three large round tables, representing the three competing states of California, Washington, and Nevada, set up in front of the overlooking stage, that would seat the three teams of two science Olympiads, their parents, and their school's principal.

Off to one side of the ballroom was a long caterer's table, to which Marcie headed towards.

The commencement toast that both celebrated and kicked off the Olympiad was always an elaborate affair, crowded with proud, young entrants, even prouder parents, principals, the event's officials, and photographers and reporters from such magazines as The Geekly Weekly and The Nerd is the Word. Marcie could see that none of its pomp was missing, now.

Yet, every team she glanced at reminded her of those halcyon days of she and Velma. She simply couldn't help it. The raw hunger of scientific competition, the natural high of scholastic honor heaped upon their clever brows, even if they hadn't won anything, yet. It all felt so painfully familiar.

But it was more than even that. It was the memory of that wonderful, electric intimacy that told her that it was just Velma and her against the world. That feeling was all hers.

But Marcie found that the sudden nostalgia didn't reenergize her, as she hoped. It, instead, did the opposite. She felt like some retired, old athlete masochistically trying to recapture her youth by coming here to, as she had said earlier, "check out the new talent."

Marcie shook her head glumly, as she leaned against the table while it was being attended by a muscular specimen of the catering staff, and looked absently at a column of stacked cups nearby. She even _sounded_ old.

As the groups of eager attendees met in tight, gregarious orbits, chatted, and then broke away, pleasantly, to form new clusters of social interaction, a well-dressed, brunette girl separated from the convivial herd, and approached an oblivious Marcie.

"Marcie? Marcie Fleet?" the girl gushed. "It's been awhile!"

Marcie awoke from her funk to acknowledge her, quizzically. "Fleach, actually. Who are you?"

The girl spoke, gesturing to herself. "You don't recognize me, Marcie? I'm Sara. Sara Avanti. Golden Dunes High, Nevada?"

Marcie dismissed her morose nostalgia and ran names and faces through her memories of past Olympiads. Finally a connection was established.

"Oh, yeah!" Marcie brightened with remembrance. "You competed four years ago when the Olympiad was held there. Sorry about what Team Washington's project did to your principal."

Sara shrugged in understanding. "I guess that's why they call it a freak accident."

"I see that he made this year," Marcie commented, nodding to where she could see him. "How's he doing, by the way?"

"Oh, he's fine," said Sara. "He's totally used to the cyborg prosthetics by now. Anyway, I just came over to see how you were doing. Where's your partner in crime? Velma?"

Marcie stiffened a little. She hadn't expected for anyone at the toast to come and ask her where her partner was. She wasn't entirely sure herself, most days.

"Oh, she...uh, couldn't make it this year," Marcie stammered slightly, but failed to hide the disappointment in her face. "She was called away. That why I decided not to enter this year."

Sara gave a sympathetic nod, then said. "That's a shame, Marcie. Well, silver lining! I guess now the rest of the states will have a fighting chance."

Marcie couldn't help but notice the nature of Sara's commiseration. It sounded as forced, as it was backhanded.

"Everybody had a fighting chance, back then, Sara," Marcie defended herself. "They still do. Velma and I were just-"

"Better?" Sara finished, the trace of an edge on the word.

Marcie gave a confused, yet wary glance at Sara. She wasn't so depressed as to miss an attack when it was issued, and Marcie was starting to feel more than a little put upon.

"I was going to say "lucky," that we had the opportunity to represent our state and school," Marcie explained, evenly. "Just like everyone else."

"But you and Velma won just about every Olympiad in recent years," Sara countered, her veneer of civility starting to wane. " _Unlike_ everybody else."

Marcie gave a deep sigh of bored disgust. She was in no mood for a fight. "Are you sure you didn't come over here to tell me you're jealous, Sara? Because that's what it looks like from where I'm standing."

Sara, now conscious of her catty mood, returned to her civility with a smile that was both tight and unconvincing.

"I'm not jealous of anything, Marcie. I was just saying that with you and Velma out of the picture, now, things will be a little more...even...for the rest of us."

Marcie looked a little more confused. "Rest of us? From what I read, you're not even entered in the Olympiad this year. So, what's with the third degree?"

"My _cousin's_ in the Olympiad, now, and we're gunning for the gold, this year," Sara said, irately crossing her arms. "I'm just making sure that everybody knows that. Don't want another blow-out from Crystal Cove, y'know?"

Now it was Marcie's turn to cross arms in irritation.

"Well, I'm sorry that you felt we were given such an unfair advantage, Sara," Marcie said, surly. "I guess if my mother married the CEO of AvantTech Systems, I'd expect things to come easier, too."

Sara stiffened. "What? What are you saying? That I went to my _folks_ to get in? That I didn't work _hard_ to get my entry into that Olympiad?"

Marcie just rolled her eyes at Sara. Bad enough that she came to this toast to begin with. Personally, there was nothing here for her. But now to be in the middle of a pissing contest with some bitter opponent who challenged her in what seemed like a hundred years ago, was beyond the pale.

The ballroom doors beckoned her, and she eagerly prepared to leave, but decided to fire one more debilitating salvo before disengaging.

"Your original science project on telecommunication was two soup cans and some string," Marcie said, dismissively. "proving conclusively that, at least, you've got _nepotism_ down to a science." She then turned on her heel and departed from the girl.

From a group of chatting adults, Sara's mother approached her daughter, prompted not from hearing the exchange, but from reading the mutually negative body language of the two girls from a distance.

"Who was that, dear?" she asked Sara.

"Marcie Fleach," Sara sniffed.

"One of the winners of the last Olympiad? I heard that she's not competing, this year. Where's the other one? Vanna...Dinkle?"

Velma Dinkley, Mom," Sara corrected with a sigh. Her mother was terrible with names. "and she's a no-show."

"Oh," her mother said. "Is that's why Fleach isn't competing this time? The poor dear looked upset."

I guess so, Mom," Sara said, watching Marcie stomp past the closing ballroom doors, with a darkly, contented smile. "It's a shame how some people behave when they can't get their own way."

The sound of the Olympiad's host clearing his throat into the microphone of the podium on stage, caused everyone present to stop their present conversations and walk over to the caterers' table. It was time.

A small-statured caterer hefted a clear, ornate punchbowl filled with red, aromatic fruit juice onto the center of the table, and removed the plastic wrap from over its mouth.

Cups were separated from their stacks, filled with punch, and then passed out carefully to the thirsty guests. The host, from his position on stage, next to his podium, was offered a cup.

When all were offered a cup, the host raised his, in salute.

"To all of these worthy students who have earned the honor of competing in this year's Tri-state Olympiad of Science," he enunciated. "We wish you sharp, quick minds and long-lasting curiosity. Long live knowledge!"

With a earnest repeat of "Long live knowledge," from all in attendance, the guests raised their disposable glasses, heartily, and drank their fill.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Marcie maneuvered past the clusters of conventioneers in a huff. She had just made it to the main entrance, when a reproachful thought stopped her cold in her tracks.

Quinlan.

A pang of guilt moved through her as she thought about the ebullient principal. This was as much Quinlan's event as it was Marcie's schoolmates'.

"Walking out on Principal Quinlan. Way to go, Marcie," she said to herself. "She was nice enough to invite me to the toast. That was an honor. I can't ruin her moment like that."

She turned around and marched back through the crowds.

It had finally clicked as to why Quinlan had invited her in the first place. She wanted Marcie to represent the school by being there, just as much as they did. To embarrass her school with such childish behavior, as storming off, would not only have been inconsiderate, but selfish to an almost personal degree.

Hoping that Principal Quinlan hadn't noticed her slipping away, Marcie reached for the doors and prepared to quietly reenter the ballroom unobtrusively.

The doors were locked.

She twisted the door knobs a bit more vigorously, but the doors resisted her, and after a few more pulls and soft raps on the doors, a troubled Marcie muttered to herself, "This doesn't make sense."

She left and a few minutes later, she returned with the building's manager and a security guard.

The manager pulled out a ringed mass of keys, selected one, and slid it into the locks. They opened.

What he, the guard, and Marcie saw next was chilling.

Bodies had littered the floor of the ballroom.

The ballroom looked as though it played host to a silent, bloodless massacre, as though the biblical Angel of Death had swept through the room, leaving juice-stained victims in his implacable wake.

Marcie hesitated to enter. She wanted to check on her principal, on the others, but the disturbing tableau had momentarily locked her legs in frightened inactivity.

Only after she saw the guard and manager step past her, did she finally find the nerve to follow them into the room.

"What happened in here," the manager asked, kneeling beside a prone woman. The reassuring sound of her snore brought with it hope for the others, and with a few light, quick slaps to the cheek, the woman stirred slowly into conscious life again.

"I don't know, sir," Marcie answered, following the manager's lead in reviving Principal Quinlan. "I left the room for a few minutes, and when I came back, it was locked."

Marcie looked around the space. Guests and officials were sprawled on the floor, close to the caterers' table, some still holding spilled cups lightly in their limp hands. Reporters and photographers fell in a heap a little further away from their subjects.

The manager walked over to another body, but called over to the guard, who had succeeded in rousing another victim.

"Barnaby, call an ambulance," he ordered. "We'll keep working here." The guard nodded, and then left the room.

Quinlan peered up at Marcie with bleary eyes, and asked, "Marcie? What...hit me? I was drinking a toast to the competitors, and the next thing I know, I hit the floor."

"The drinks must've been spiked with some sort of knock-out drug," Marcie easily surmised. If that was the case, she thought, then that quickly begged the question...

"Where are the caterers?" Marcie asked aloud. Of all the adult bodies discovered, not one of them wore the white livery of the catering staff.

She was about to mentally file them away as possible suspects to mention to the authorities, upon their arrival, when Quinlan, looking around, unsteadily, groggily asked another question that earned its place of top priority in Marcie's mind.

"Marcie...where are the kids?"

* * *

If Marcie had thought this year's Olympiad had seemed a bit sedate, then the sight of the sheriff and his deputies questioning the rallied science magazine reporters and photographers, and the stalwart members of Crystal Cove's emergency medical teams settling the nerves of revived guests and officials, put that all to rest.

While other deputies questioned distraught family members and others, Deputy Bucky walked away from a fellow deputy that had relayed a report to him.

He spied his commanding officer standing on the stage, by the podium, looking over the emotional hubbub near the caterers' table, down below, and questioning the event's host.

Bucky waddled up to Sheriff Bronson Stone's side and reported the other deputy's findings.

"Sheriff, we found the catering truck parked in the loading dock out back," Bucky said. "The real caterers were tied up in the back and their uniforms were missing."

Stone stroked his squarish chin, thoughtfully. "That connects with what the event coordinator, here, said. The caterers were gone when everyone woke up." Stone turned his attention back to the frazzled man.

"Now when you woke up," the sheriff confirmed. "The junior eggheads were gone and you found this..." He gestured to the flat-surfaced object opened and sitting on top of the podium. "sitting over here."

"Yes, Sheriff!" said the host, the fear of losing his well-paying job, heavy in his voice. "In the history of the Olympiad this has never happened before. An attack and a multiple kidnapping? This could ruin the event for good!"

"Well, why didn't you have security screen your guests before your little nerd shindig?" Stone drawled.

"We prided ourselves that we enlightened people had no need for such measures," the host answered with quick pride, then added, uncomfortably, "And Sheriff, I would thank you to please stop disparaging our Olympiad. This is, or rather, was a grand celebration of intellectual excellence."

Stone sniffed at that. "And yet you people were the ones who got rolled on. Ya don't look very smart from where I'm sittin'."

"But you're not sitting, Sheriff. You're standing," Marcie said from behind him, peering past the big man to see the object on the podium. It was an open laptop. Its monitor was on and a glowing message was writ on its face.

The host, wondering why a girl was present on the stage with the adults, and how that could possibly help, took a closer look at Marcie's face, recognized it for the first time today, and brightened, despite the situation.

"Marcie Fleach?" he asked. "I would have expected you to competing again with your partner, Velma Dinkley."

"If we had," Marcie said. "We probably would have been just waking up from the punch, like everyone else."

"Indeed. Still, Principal Quinlan neglected to tell me that she had invited you. If she did, I would have brought you up on stage to make a little speech. But why _are_ you here?" the host asked, wanting to know, for the sake of conversation, her reasons for attending, if she was not participating.

Marcie, thinking he was wondering why she was on stage with them, while she studied the message on the computer screen, simply answered, "Curiosity."

It was a truthful response, she had to admit. Curiosity had steered her, almost subconsciously, to the stage, after she had made sure that Principal Quinlan was put right, and had noticed the laptop.

The host scratched his bald spot in thought. "I hadn't seen this laptop on the podium when I came to speak. I wonder who left it."

Stone, bored of the talk between the two, and realizing that he wasn't getting any of his sheriffing duties in, chimed in.

"It's obvious that we're dealing here is some geek who's trying to get back at all of you brainy types because you didn't let him join your little computer club," Stone dismissed.

Marcie thought that out and, with an honest start, said to the sheriff, "You know, Sheriff, that's not such a bad hypothesis."

"It's not?" he asked, suspicious that a brainy type would agree so quickly with him. Then he asked, as an afterthought, "And what's a hypothesis?"

"A guess," Marcie answered. "Perhaps that _was_ the motivation of this attacker." She turned to the host.

"Has there ever been any threats to stop the Olympiad because of disgruntled entrants?" Marcie asked him.

"Not at all," he explained. "As you know, all competitors are screened based on their scholastic achievements, test scores, and grade averages. You, yourself, Miss Fleach, have had scores that consistently put you and Miss Dinkley in the highest percentile for acceptance in the Olympiad, year after year. An historical triumph for the event, as a whole."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," an indifferent Stone grumbled, waving the accolades away.

Marcie ignored Stone's rudeness and read the message. "Answer the riddle to get the code and start the game." She then pondered, "What game?"

The host looked at the computer again and said, "I haven't the foggiest."

Marcie reached over and, taking a chance to proceed further, tapped the ENTER key.

"Hey, cut that out," Stone chided her. A four-line riddle appeared in the screen's center for her to read next.

"This crystal's wondrous to a fault,

When pay day comes, it's in a vault,

It also grinds plants to a halt,

What is the crystal? It's name is-blank."

"Salt," Marcie said, matter-of-factly.

Stone, not understanding a bit of the proceedings, gave a weary scowl to Marcie that she recognized all too quickly, because it was given to her all too frequently, these days.

"What are you doing here, anyway, Margo?" he asked. "This is a police investigation, not a trivia game."

"It's Marcie, Sheriff," she corrected, patiently. "and the answer _is_ salt."

"I suppose whoever left this wants someone to type it on the screen," the host suggested. Reaching past Marcie, he typed in the word "salt" over the underlined space underneath the riddle. In response, the computer showed him a frowny face and a distressing message.

"Ah! It didn't work!" the host said, panicking. "We have two minutes and two more tries before it erases _all_ the riddles, and we never see the children again!"

Quickly, Stone glowered at the girl in justification. "You see? You don't know what you're doing. Now get outta here, Marsha, before I run you in for interfering in my sheriffy duties."

Marcie ignore his threats, but couldn't understand what was going on. It was the right answer.

"But, Sheriff, the answer is salt!" she explained, hoping that he would calm down, and let her stay and help. "It's a crystal, in ancient Rome, it was used as money, and if enough of it is spread on fertile ground, plants won't grow."

Marcie turned to the host, and bade him, "Type sodium chloride!"

The host typed the words in, and again, a frowny face appeared.

The host trembled. His actions were possibly dooming the young contestants as he typed, and he seriously began to wonder if letting one of the previous champions of the Science Olympiad call the shots on a kidnapping investigation was the wisest course of action. "It didn't work!"

Marcie screwed up her face in frustration and stared at the laptop in deep thought. It was salt, she thought, angrily. She'd bet her life on it, but then, with a pang of fear, she suddenly understood, as the host did, that she was actually betting the missing children's lives.

She decided to take a calming breath and think. No emotions. Just reason. Then a thought came to her.

Quickly, she typed in the chemical notation for sodium chloride, and breathed a prayer.

A smiley face appeared as her reward, and the next riddle appeared on the screen. Relieved, she read on.

"Three riddles will tell where three teams are hidden,

This may be a game, but I'm far from kiddin',

Follow the clues that I have written,

To a code for a bomb, to be overridden."

Everyone shivered at the mention of a bomb. With a word, the stakes had just jumped to a very urgent and uncomfortable level.

A second riddle scrolled across the monitor. This time, the sheriff read, his mind trying to decipher the conundrum as fast as he could read it. It seemed very unlikely.

"Team One is in this place, concealed,

With bones for sale and thrones on wheels,

Steel tanks save and blades can heal,

A martial sounding place revealed."

Stone turned to Bucky, all business. "Alright, get this thing to the lab and have it dusted for prints, while we figure out what this riddle means."

He then turned to where Marcie had been standing. "Okay, girly, you-"

She was gone.

He looked out over the ballroom, scanning every worried or reassuring face below, checking every far corner of the room. Nothing. There wasn't a single sighting of that messy mop of brown hair anywhere.

The sheriff growled low in irritation, as he descended from the stage. He had a feeling that she was going to get involved somehow, and was getting a little tired of her sticking her spectacle-balancing nose where it didn't belong.

Stopping by the catering table, Stone sighed, frustrated that he didn't get to finish his harangue, and asked a tag-along Bucky, "Where did she go?"

"I don't know, Sheriff."

"Eh, it's just as well," Stone said, haughtily. "This is a case that requires the keen mind of years of law enforcement, and the instincts of a street-wise jungle cat."

"Yes, sir," Bucky gushed.

Stone rubbed his throat for a moment. "Working on a case like this makes me a tad thirsty." He looked over and saw a filled, abandoned cup next to the punchbowl.

The street-wise jungle cat was out soon after.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Reporters were waiting outside for Stone, once he recovered from the punch and made his way to the front of the building. Once seen, they encircled and pounced on him with questions from every side, like a practiced pack of journalistic wild dogs on prey.

Around the back of the convention center, a single police car was parked in the middle of the loading docks' driveway, at an angle more to keep vehicles from leaving than anything else.

Marcie quietly walked around the building after she had left the ballroom, interested in not being caught, and in learning all she could from the three ambushed caterers, whom she saw were talking with a interviewing deputy on duty, and wrapped in police-issue blankets.

From her hiding spot along the support arcade, she thought hard. She wanted to know what the deputy was getting from the men, but she knew that the policeman would just as soon report her to Stone, as offer up any clues to her.

Clues, she thought again, changing her tactics with sudden inspiration. Perhaps in the truck.

From her position by the loading docks, Marcie was closer to the nearby catering truck than to its owners. But she frowned when she saw that the truck was parked with its rear doors logically pointing out its parking spot for ease of loading. If she tried to casually walk over to open them, she'd be easy prey for the caterers, nevermind the deputy.

Studying the rest of the vehicle, however, she soon found a way in. The driver-side window was a more than halfway down.

The men were engaged in their conversation, so much so, that if she timed it just right, she could sneak over to the vehicle, open the door, and slip in.

Thankful that the docks and its parking lot were all concrete and asphalt, and not lined with lawn for her feet to crush and give her position away, Marcie hunched over and sped-walked over to the side of a nearby maintenance crew's pickup truck. Parked next to that, was her quarry.

She braved a peek over the truck's dented hood to check the situation by the deputy's car. Nothing had changed, but the deputy was moving around more. If he turned his head in her direction while she moved...

Marcie shook the thought away, she was wasting time with dire possibilities. She hunkered down again and awkwardly squeezed herself through the narrow space that was made between the truck's bumper and radiator grill, and the concrete wall of the dockside parking lot.

Fortunately, the truck's driver hadn't parked it too close to the wall, allowing Marcie to get past with only a dirty wool jacket to show for her efforts.

She was closer now, close enough to hear snatches of talk from the men, as she crept by the side of the catering truck. Reaching the driver-side door, Marcie gripped the handle and lifted it. The door was heldfast. Locked.

She realized fast that things were going to be tricky for her. She would have to stand up, momentarily, to reach inside the door to open it, and expose herself to discovery.

Marcie slowly straightened herself up into a wary stance, willing herself to be unnoticed. The men were, at the moment, too focused on their immediate feelings of what happened today to use their peripheral vision to see Marcie reach in through the window and quietly open the resisting door.

Crawling across the driver's seat, Marcie decided against closing the door and giving herself away. She kept low of the surrounding windows and shimmied between the driver's and the front passenger's seat, sliding onto the floor of the half-filled rear cargo area.

No windows in the truck's loading area meant that Marcie had the confidence to move around more freely among the sealed containers of food and boxes of utensils, but she had to work quickly.

Sliding stacks of boxes and checking around the spaces they stood yielded nothing for her, as she worked her way methodically towards the rear loading doors, and she was beginning to think she was dangerously wasting her time there, when her eyes spotted a slip of paper lying near the bottom hinge of one of the doors.

Going on hands and knees, Marcie quickly moved over to the paper and examined it.

It was a receipt from a restaurant, a cafe, actually, crumpled and greasy from misuse, showing the tally for a roast beef sandwich, a slice of apple pie, and a cup of coffee.

"Rhonda's Rhoadside Cafe," she read. Then she froze in terror, as she heard someone talking up front. One of the caterers had went to the truck and was about to open the door to get in.

Marcie ducked behind a stack of wide boxes, as the man rummaged around the seats for a few moments.

From her hiding space, Marcie heard one of the men yell out that the truck's keys were with him, prompting the rummager to stop his search and leave the vehicle, much to the girl's relief.

Feeling that she had stayed longer than was appropriate for a guest, Marcie pocketed the clue and crawled back to the forward seats, this time, carefully unlocking the passenger-side door, and slipping out.

Risking a peek from around the truck's rear, she saw that the caterers were alone for the moment, standing by the deputy's patrol car. Time for some questions.

She sauntered over to the blanketed trio, just as they finally took notice of her approach.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," Marcie started. "I was wondering if any of you fellas seen who attacked you?"

One of the caterers sighed. "It happened too fast, and they were wearing masks. One minute, we were setting up for that Science thing, the next, some guys nail us with knock-out darts and took our uniforms."

"We told the police everything we knew," said the second caterer.

Marcie was satisfied, inwardly. She figured foul play, and it was confirmed.

"One last thing," she asked. "Do any of you eat at a place called Rhonda's Rhoadside Cafe?"

The third caterer looked up in thought, then said, "Nope, can't say that we do. We've always eaten at Eleanor's Easy Eatery."

Marcie could see the deputy coming back. Time to go.

She filed the info away, thanked the men, and then began to depart.

"Hey," the third caterer called out. "Who are you?"

Marcie turned, a look of innocence working on her face. "Me? I'm Margo Freep. Reporter for Crystal Cove High School Newspaper. I have to get back before the presses start pressing, or rolling, or whatever they do. Bye!"

She jogged away from the confused men just as the policeman returned. He only caught sight of Marcie's back, and so asked the caterers who she was.

"Someone named Freep," said the first caterer. Then he looked at the second one. "She said her name was Freep, right?"

"Freep, yeah," confirmed the second.

"Yeah," the third chimed in. "She looked like a Freep."

* * *

Following the address printed on the top of the receipt, Marcie pulled up into the cafe's small parking lot.

Stepping out of the Clue Cruiser, she took in the lay of the place.

It looked like a typical, or stereotypical, roadside eatery. The kind one would see gracing the front of one of those "Wish You Were Here" postcards. 1950's architecture, tall neon sign that one could see for a mile, the occasional eighteen-wheeler parked in the lot for ambience, and large booth windows that gave a nice view of the gas station and neighboring motel across the road.

Marcie entered the establishment, and wasn't met with so much as a glance from the drifters, truckers and local folk who patronized the place. The same couldn't be said for the gregarious, big-haired, middle-aged woman who did stop to watch who walked into her restaurant.

Rhonda assessed Marcie in seconds, and didn't like what she saw. She walked briskly over to the teenager, concern in her eyes, as a way of greeting.

"Oh, my grease and gravy!" the proprietress fretted at Marcie, appraising her as thoroughly as if she were a race horse. "Sugar, look at you, you're just wastin' away!"

The woman leaned her head in the general direction of the kitchen, and called out, "Jean-Phillipe, whip up some of my Rhoadside Stew for this girl, on the house!"

The unabashed and slightly uncomfortable attention was making diners turn their collective attention to Marcie, yet before she could diplomatically process all of the hullabaloo that this stranger was creating on the girl's behalf, Rhonda placed a hand on Marcie's shoulder and maternally took her aside.

"Listen to me, honey," Rhonda conferred, quietly. "I was young once, too, but there ain't no need to be runnin' to the bathroom after every meal and starving yourself for the boys. If they can't see your inner beauty, then they just ain't worth it."

Marcie, finally understanding what the fuss was about, rolled her eyes, and said, in a polite, yet long-suffered deadpan, "While I appreciate the free meal, ma'am, I'm not bulimic."

Rhonda looked closely at Marcie, while she offered the girl a table, not sure if she should believe her. She could have just said that to refuse the help out of embarrassment.

"Are you sure, hon?" Rhonda asked. "It's all right to talk it out. We're both women, here."

"Yes, I'm quite sure," Marcie said, patiently, as she sat down. "I was just wondering if you could help me with something."

That seemed to placate the restaurateur. "All right. Shoot."

Marcie took out the receipt and handed it to her. "I came across a receipt to this cafe. The date on it says that it was printed out a few days ago. I'd like to know if you could tell me who purchased the items on it."

Rhonda gave it a quick perusal, but then, she shook her head, regretfully. "Oh, we got a lot of folks comin' through here, all the time, Sugar. But it looks like whoever paid for all of this, paid in cash. I'm sorry, hon. If he or she used a credit card, I could probably help ya more. Now, let's see what we can do about fattin' you up some." She returned the paper to Marcie, and then took her leave.

While Marcie waited for her stew to arrive, she glumly held the receipt between her fingers, rubbing the tips against the paper while she thought.

'There has to be more to this,'

she mused, then she pocketed the receipt and scowled in thought.

"I have to figure out what that riddle meant," Marcie mused aloud. Meanwhile, the nearby patrons quietly wondered why she was suddenly talking to herself.

She ran the memorized stanzas over and over in her mind, pulling out suspect words, and dissecting whole lines from the riddle, trying to find the urgent solution that would lead her to the pit where the first missing competitors were trapped. But nothing was forthcoming.

""A martial sounding place revealed,"" Marcie recited. "That sounds like the Crystal Cove Armory, but security is way too tight to sneak people in just to hide them. Unless the kidnappers have military clearance of some kind, the Armory's unlikely to be it."

She stubbornly tried again, yet it felt like the deeper she dug, the harder the conundrum was to solve concretely. ""With bones for sale..." Who sells bones?" she asked herself. "Where are they? In a butcher shop?"

Frustration was creeping into her thought processes, and she had to stop, for a moment, to find her inner calm and dispassion to work through the riddle again. The answer, she knew, was sitting on her face, but it was like trying to unravel, not a tight Gordian Knot, but a unkempt, tangled mass of string, comprised of nothing else but sloppy Mobius loops.

"All right," Marcie said. "Tanks aren't built to save people, and blades are weapons. They don't heal people."

She sighed and leaned back in her chair. She wanted to take her mind off of the case, to rest, if just for a few moments. Absently, she looked around the dinning area, and spied a sign hanging near the ordering counter that said "We cater. Ask for our rates."

A well-needed joke bubbled up from that little detail and brought a little chuckle from Marcie.

"It's too bad _this_ place didn't do the catering," she muttered. "Things might've turned out better. If the guests had drank any more of that punch, the hospital would have had to order more smelling...salts..."

Her mind exploded with a leap of logic.

_Hospital..._

_Order..._

Marcie bolted from her chair, the sudden motion turning patrons' heads. She walked briskly to the line of customers gathered to order, and cut in front of them, to see the cashier.

"Hey, you can't cut in line, girly," the cashier chided Marcie. "Wait your turn."

Marcie, ignoring the irate grumbles and murmurs of offended people behind her, asked, "Do you have a phone book?"

"Yeah, under the pay phone, over by the bathrooms," said the cashier.

Marcie left the front of the line and beelined to the side of the dinning area where the bathrooms awaited. There was hung on the graffiti-scrawled wall, a pay phone, and in a small shelf beneath it, was a dog-eared, local phone book.

Marcie opened it, earnestly, and flipped the delicate pages over to M. Then, her fingers blurred across business after business until, finally, a slim finger slid down the list, and she found her target.

A single address appeared by her fingertip. Ivana Medical Supply Warehouse 502 Marshal Street.

A tight smile of triumph rolled across Marcie's face.

"Marshal Street," she said. "A _martial_ _sounding_ place, indeed."

She jogged out of the cafe, jumped into her car, and tore back to the heart of town, hoping that her deductions weren't too late.

Rhonda had finally returned to Marcie's now-empty table, carrying a hot bowl of stew on a platter.

"Now, where'd she go?" she asked aloud. "Some people. And I even put in extra helpin' of muskrat, too."

 


	4. Chapter 4

A dark, gloved hand curiously stroked the edged cheek bone of a skull on a shelf. It ran fingers across its smooth, dome-like top before the cloaked and hooded figure walked away from it.

Inside the dark interior of the Ivana Medical Supply Warehouse, the figure moved both as a furtive, searching thing, and as someone who glided along the aisles of catheters and bedpans as comfortably as if it had been haunting the place for years.

The figure peered into offices, checked around parked forklifts, and listened near stacked boxes of product, then moved away, unsatisfied.

The length and breadth of the building, at least those parts of it that didn't bar due to being more secure than others, were searched as thoroughly as time allowed, yet the quarry remained frustratingly elusive.

The figure was about to head towards the warehouse's storage cellar, when a sound from the far side of the building caused the figure to flow into the deep shadows of nearby aisles.

The door of the building's side entrance shuddered, as beams of late afternoon sunlight squeezed through the widening space between door and frame. Wisps of smoke issued from where the hinges would be, and an acrid scent filled the air.

Strong, thin fingers gripped the lock side of the door, and gingerly pulled it open, allowing Marcie to cautiously step into the warehouse.

Although she was grateful for the sunlight illuminating a good portion of the interior, Marcie felt an immediate concern at how easy her breaking and entering was. Why didn't she trip an alarm?

The figure maintained its position in the darkness, watching Marcie tip-toe along, searching the corners and unoccupied shadows of the building with her penlight.

Marcie wanted to call out for the team, and hopefully hear a response, but stealth was the watchword for the moment, such as it was, with her flooding half the warehouse in daylight.

She then began moving into the areas where the aisles were. Sunlight was just touching the part of the aisles pointed towards the office and loading area, but if she were to venture further, she would have slipped into the darkness of that part of the building.

As the figure retreated further into the shadows, Marcie slowly advanced into them.

The penlight flashed along the canyon walls of the tall aisles of medical product, as Marcie progressed, determined to check the whole of the building for any sign of Team California, or any booby traps laid out to discourage would-be rescuers from finding them. So far, nothing was amiss.

Marcie turned and backtracked out of the aisles momentarily, concerned that someone might have discovered the acid-opened door.

She was preparing a hastily-concocted lie for her being there, when a body was seen standing by the doorway, casting a long shadow before her.

The hooded figure, noticing Marcie's cautious approach, spoke first.

"Who are you?" asked the figure, in a rasp whisper. "What are you doing here?"

Marcie stood her ground, trying to rein in her sudden trepidation, and studying the figure's appearance, so as to give an accurate description to the police, when she eventually ran into them.

"Who are you?” Marcie asked back. “Are you the one who kidnapped those kids?"

The figure spread arms wide in greeting, the worn cloak widening to a psychologically intimidating degree.

"I'm the Glum Reaper, and I'm only here to get what's mine. If you're thinking about getting in my way, however..." He finished his speech by sliding out an axe, its lethal head shining bright against the light of day, from the depths of his cloak.

The axe brought the already awkward situation into a tense one for Marcie, yet she felt she had to stay. If this person was responsible for the kidnappings, then getting him to talk might reveal more information on where the victims were.

"Glum Reaper, huh?" Marcie asked, flippantly. "You do know that the Grim Reaper carried a _scythe_ , not an axe."

Glum responded by approaching the girl, his ragged mantle fluttering from the movement like the settling of a raven's wings.

"Why do you think I'm so glum?" he answered. "Now get out of here."

"Sorry, can't do that," Marcie decided, feeling decidedly glum herself, when she noticed Glum closing the distance with more verve.

"Then it's time for you to reap what you have sown," came his final word, as the axe flashed up into a striking motion.

Marcie, needing no more indication of this stranger's intent, turned off her penlight, and leapt into a evasive run back into the relative safety of the vast darkness among the aisles, Glum in frustrated pursuit.

Fear helped her maintain her lead, as Marcie ran priorities through her mind, as fast as she ran through the warehouse.

First, evade her opponent.

There were sixty aisles, in total, in the dark side of the building, and Marcie, struggling to maintain a stealthy distance from her pursuer, was determined to use every one, as they both zigged and zagged in one aisle and out the other.

With the penlight off and fumbling hands outstretched to feel her way, she hoped that the darkness would hamper Glum's movements through this maze, as much as it did hers.

_Stop._

The soft sound of mantle brushing along the floor. Try to accelerate ahead and increase distance by two aisle lengths.

After doing so, and once her eyes had better adjusted to the gloom, a careful peek over her shoulder showed that Glum had eventually lost her. He wasn't seen, but could be heard in the rear, bumping into the sides of aisles while trying to quickly find Marcie's position when she evaded.

Second priority, capture said opponent.

Marcie exited from an aisle, and suddenly had to fight to keep from panicking, once she made out the macabre shape of hanging skeletons on display racks, up ahead.

“With bones for sale,” she sighed, relievedly.

Once her nerves settled, Marcie forced herself to work on a trap, for it was obvious that this Glum Reaper was trying to keep her from looking further into the warehouse. One look at the grim bones in front of her, however, suddenly gave her all the inspiration she would need.

Although it would have been hard to see, Glum held up his axe in a silent promise to drive its head into this meddlesome girl. He was in stealth mode, walking quietly in the dark, and straining his ears through his hood, for a sound, any sound that would give the doomed girl away.

_Step. Step._

He crept slowly along the warehouse's labyrinth, disregarding the sounds of his own footsteps.

_Step. Step._

He could only make out ambient sound up ahead, but not enough to pinpoint a useful direction from which to draw a bead on the girl. It felt like some human reenactment of a submarine duel. Run silent, run deep, indeed.

_Step. Step._

A light up ahead! The girl!

Glum raised his weapon, and ran as fast, and as quietly, as he could towards the shine at the end of an aisle up ahead of him.

As he closed on her, he could finally see the sleeve of Marcie's wool jacket illuminated by her held penlight. The axe rose even higher, more energy for the downstroke.

Glum leaped out of the aisle and brought the axe down without another thought, its head connecting solidly to skull, yet it wasn't clear to him what skull he had struck.

Upon closer inspection, over the fallen, but still, running penlight, Glum could see, to his eternal sheepishness, the decoy made of a skeleton wearing Marcie's jacket and loosely holding her penlight.

Chagrined, he was about to resume the chase, when the crackling sound of something small came up from the floor near his feet.

Glum prepared to walk and suddenly found that he couldn't lift his feet, and the more he struggled, he more heldfast his feet were when they rested on the floor again.

With growls that were tinged more with fear and frustration, than with anger, Glum almost missed Marcie stepping out from a nearby aisle, a comfortable distance away from him.

"New invention," Marcie explained, picking up the pen light that rolled by her feet. "Encapsulated rubber cement that expands and hardens when in contact with air. I call them my Splat Caps. You've been stomping on a few, just now, but I won't hold that against you."

She turned to go back to the light side of the warehouse to continue her search, but said, in parting, "However, my Splat Caps will hold _you_ against the floor for a while. Enjoy."

'The basement,’ Marcie thought, ignoring the sounds of desperate futility behind her. _'A place this big should have a cellar, or storage room. The team might be in there, somewhere. I hope.'_

Utilizing the daylight, she checked along the far side of the work area, the dim walls that held strong, metal doors that led either through, or, she hoped, down.

There!

Marcie sped-walked over to such a door that sported a sign that read "Storage Basement," but just before she made a motion to open it, she spotted a cd player on a nearby desk, with a sheet of paper partially covering it, that read, "To Olympiad."

She went over and picked up the player, turning it this way and that, inspecting it for anything untoward. Except for the fact that it was already loaded with a small cd, it looked harmless.

After she was grudgingly satisfied that it didn't pose some threat to her, she gingerly placed the earbuds into her ears and pressed Play.

"Greetings, Former Olympiad," the amiably smooth male voice said to her. "I'm happy to see that someone at the toast has brains. Not that Sheriff Stone, surely."

Marcie gave a troubled frown at that, wondering how on earth did this voice on the cd know anything about what happened at the convention center.

Not only that, whoever this Glum Reaper was, he didn't sound anything like the voice on the cd. So who was he? Did he worked for this voice in some capacity? A guard, perhaps?

Marcie shook her head and dismissed the notion. The garb and the axe? Glum didn't seem like a guard, and if he didn't kidnap anyone, then why was he here?

"You're probably wondering why I went through all of this, and why I will put _you_ through all of this," the voice continued, bringing her out of her revelry. "It's simple, really. These last few Olympiads, you will agree, were far too easy, not challenging enough, and, well, let's face it, hardly worthy of the name Tri-state Olympiad of Science. So, I decided to change all of that. Look under the cd player, and then check the basement."

Marcie looked down on the desk, and was surprised that she hadn't notice the envelope before. Picking it up, she opened it, took out the folded note from within, and read the riddle.

"From my dark imagination,

Comes this lesson on moderation,

The truth of this trap is for you to see,

Oh, to have too much can be bad for thee."

Marcie gave a thought to the conundrum, but couldn't unravel it right away, so, she shrugged, opened the basement door, and descended.

Quietly, the door sealed and locked itself behind her.

As Marcie crept down the staircase, she had to wonder why the path was lit only with various, colored glowsticks held aloft on thread that was taped to the ceiling. It gave the proceedings an unnerving, gothic quality.

She made it to the foot of the stairs, then turned to see the immensity of the basement before her. It was, essentially, a smaller warehouse underneath the main one above, also lit with hanging glowsticks, casting the whole interior in a multi-colored twilight.

As she began to walk deep into the cellar, she noticed that the terrain was dominated, not with metal aisles, but with orderly cityscapes of stacked boxes on pallets, and gas tanks lined in rows beside a work bench, and against stone walls. If the hostages were in there, the boxes could keep them well-hidden, while she wound up losing herself in the labyrinth of medical supplies.

They have to be here, she thought, grimly.

After a few minutes, Marcie gave a mental estimation of how far she had walked from the staircase, and concluded that she had made it to what she could only guess was the center of the dim basement. Then, she heard a shuffle and moans.

Coming around an island of crates, Marcie stepped out and found, to her deep relief, the hostages.

Comprised presently of two haggard-looking teenaged boys, Team California sat bound by rope to their chairs, gagged with bandannas, and noticeably short of breath. Hanging over their heads was another envelope, held up by a thread.

"Hang on, guys," Marcie consoled. "I'll get you loose."

Pulling her Swiss Army knife from her jacket, she carved into the tough rope's fibers, leaving scraps and rough lengths of hemp by the freed hostages' feet. As they gratefully stood and rubbed the circulation back into their extremities, Marcie reached up and plucked the envelope from its string.

"Another riddle?" she asked herself.

"Hey, thanks a lot," said the first team member, catching his breath. "We weren't here that long, but I'm sure that we don't want to spend another minute in this place."

"Yeah," the second team member chimed in, taking a pained inhale. "It looks like a rave in Dracula's castle."

"What's wrong?" Marcie asked them, when she began to notice their breathlessness. "Are you all right?"

"I don't know. We were fine a little while ago," Team Member #1 managed to say. "then, all of the sudden, we both started feeling like we ran a marathon."

"It's just gotten so hard to breathe, for some reason," Team Member #2 huffed.

"Don't worry," said Marcie, turning back to the direction of the distant stairs. "Just follow me, and we'll get out of here."

She pulled a glowstick free from her surroundings to use as a light source, as she opened the envelope and read the letter she released.

"Hello," Marcie read aloud. "You just turned on a voice-activated countdown, when you said "Hello.""

A flat screen monitor, hidden in the uppermost box of a nearby stack, extended from its concealment, glowed to life, and showed five minutes beginning to count down, distressingly.

"You have five minutes until an electric match is activated," she finished reading. They all bolted to the stairs with no further prompting.

"An electric match? That's a heat source," Marcie pondered, as she and the others, immediately exhausted, reached the foot of the staircase. She took a careful sniff of the air. "But I don't smell anything for him to set off with it."

"Like gas?" asked Team Member #1. "We saw nothing like that down here."

"Yeah. Just a lot of medical supplies, from what we could see," said Team Member #2.

"Hmm," Marcie pondered again, leaning against the side of the stairs to rest. What good was an electric match, if there was nothing for it to burn? And why was everyone, even herself, strangely, so winded?

She took a glance at the basement's environs, wondering why the teens' captor would keep them there.

Her surroundings, however strange, gradually demanded that her mind take notice, and when it finally did, she froze in brilliant enlightenment.

"Wait a minute!" Marcie said, with a start. She pulled out the earlier riddle and read it again. "Lesson on moderation? Oh, to have too much can be bad for thee...An electric match..."

She looked around the far periphery of the cellar, and finally, with her senses alert to it, noticed the soft hissing that she hadn't earlier.

"Stay here," Marcie commanded. She listened for the sound of release and carefully tracked it to a row of oxygen tanks, their valves open. Then, it dawned on her.

"Oh, to have too much can be bad for thee..." she recited. "Oh, to... _O2!_ Oxygen! And too much _can_ be bad for us! We're out of breath because we’re breathing in too much _pure_ oxygen. And it's flammable! That's why there are glowsticks everywhere, and the alarms didn't go off upstairs. There's no electricity in this building, except down here for the electric match!"

Marcie reached over and turned off the tanks, but she knew the air was already impregnated with pure oxygen, by now.

"What did you say?" asked Team Member #2.

Marcie jogged back, yelling, "Up the stairs! Now!"

Team California didn't ask what was happening, they just obeyed, running pell-mell upstairs, but when they reached the door, it wouldn't yield.

"We can't get out!" screamed Team member #2.

"The door's...locked!" Team member #1 yelled in a breathless panic.

Below them, Marcie gave a chagrined sneer at not realizing sooner that this was the first trap, a layered one, and could quite possibly be the last for all of them. But time had not run out yet...

"Stay up there, you guys!" Marcie called out. "I'm going to look for the match!"

Team California couldn't believe what she said. "What?" they asked in unison.

"I've got to disable it," Marcie explained, knowing, soberly, that there simply was no time to search the whole of the basement. "but in case I don't find it, you guys stay up there. The higher you are, the safer you'll be, if the gas goes off. Wait a minute."

Something told Marcie to check her immediate area first, so, she chanced a peek under the stairs and saw something intriguing.

Bolted to the floor, was a square, perforated cage, a thick electrical wire running from its base and past the boxes beyond.

Kneeling down, she peered into the boxy cage with her penlight, and saw the electric match in its center, so placed so no one could tamper with it.

"I found it," she signaled to the others.

"It's an electric match. Can you find the power line and, oh, I don't know, cut it with you knife?" Team Member # 2 surly asked.

"Cut a live wire?" Marcie asked him, sarcastically, chalking up the boy's very bad idea to fear. "No thanks, beside, I can't take a chance that a spark will set off the oxygen."

Marcie sat in front of the cage in a desperate funk, trying to force the panic of an imminent death from clouding her thinking.

"How do I keep this thing from burning?” she asked herself. “There's no water in here, just medical supplies. Wait! Medical supplies! Tanks! A gas for a gas!"

Standing upright, like a shot, Marcie ran over to where she remembered seeing other tanks standing in rows by a workbench. Looking around, she finally spotted, in the back row, a dusty tank of CO2.

Awkwardly grabbing the tank from the top, she dragged it over to the electric match's cage and gently laid it down. Then, she ran back to the worn workbench and fished frantically through its drawers, finally finding a tank wrench and a valve.

Staring to huff and puff from increased exposure to the pure O2, and hoping that she had the right valve, Marcie ran back to the CO2 tank, knelt down, and clumsily, urgently attached the valve to the gas cylinder with the wrench.

Then, she rolled, swung and pointed the cumbersome tank at the tiny cage, as though she were playing some high-stakes version of "spin the bottle," and opened the valve to full, releasing a continued, pressurized gust of carbon dioxide.

Then Marcie wearily headed up the stairs.

"What happened down there?" Team Member #1 asked, while letting Marcie pass, so she could examine the door.

"I just released carbon dioxide next to the match," Marcie told him, running her hands and the beam of her pen light along the tight space between the closed door and its frame. There was a rubber lining filling that space. The modified door was effectively sealing the oxygen-rich air in with them. "It's good against electrical fires. Hopefully, the CO2 will keep the match from igniting, buying me time to burn through the door with my acid vials."

"You...carry acid with you?" Team Member #2 asked from behind them.

"I never leave home without it," Marcie said, while applying the liquid along the hinge plates and hearing the satisfying hiss of destroyed metal.

"When I give the word," Marcie told them. "We're gonna ram the door together."

With a practiced eye, Marcie could see the bubbling hinges finally surrender to the corrosive assault of her acid. Now the only holding the door in place was its lock.

"Get ready," she huffed. The boys stood in running positions on the stairs, focusing on escape and not their fatigue.

"Now!"

The trio rushed up and slammed into the thick door, causing it to give way and swivel on its stubborn lock, and then crash to the floor with a heap of grateful children on top.

"I think it's way past five minutes," Marcie surmised, as she slowly got up, luxuriating in breathing in air that contained the customary 21 percent oxygen. "and since we don't have an oxygen-rich fireball flying up where the Good Lord sits us, the CO2 must've did its job."

Slowly, she began walking towards the aisles, Team California in tow.

"Suffocation by air," pondered Team Member #1. "or immolation by same."

"Whoever grabbed us, knows his science," said Team Member #2.

Marcie had to concur, getting closer to the aisle and the area where she left the so-called Glum Reaper. Inwardly, she had to congratulate the voice on the cd for what was a deliciously clever riddle and deathtrap. It looked like he might deliver on his goal to make this year's Olympiad one for the history books.

On the other hand, she wasn't too keen on getting killed by this maniac, so, the sooner he was discovered and law enforcement had him in custody, the better.

"Yeah," Marcie quipped, soberly. "I can smell the evil genius from here."

"Where are you going?" Team Member # 2 asked her, as they entered the dark aisle.

Switching on her pen light, Marcie answered, "I'm just checking up on someone I left behind."

Swinging the beam of light around the area that she recognized as the last place she saw Glum, she saw instead, nothing.

"I guess he had to take off," she said, as she looked down and saw how Glum had managed to escape his bonds.

On the floor, still stuck in the opposing goo, were a pair of dark-colored boots.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The noise level of the police station rose and fell proportionately with the success and failure of the police officers working on this high profile, multiple kidnapping.

In his office, Sheriff Stone stole a longing glance up from the paper he was working on, to his currently empty holding cells, nearby, while a slightly nervous Marcie stood in front of his desk. He never felt so tempted to chuck the skinny, little busybody into one of them until she was in her thirties, if not longer.

"Even though I'm busy with this kidnapping case, I wanted to wait until they finished taking your statement, Marigold," Stone said to Marcie, with calm menace. "so I could _personally_ put you under my holding cell. When I told you not to interfere in my investigation, that wasn't a suggestion."

"It's Marcie, and I figured out the riddle to where the team was. I had to do something," she protested.

"You could've come to me with the answer," the sheriff grumbled.

"Would you have understood it?" Marcie asked, earnestly. "Would you have believed me?"

Stone gave her a dismissive glance. "Not really, but you would have, at least, respected my authority. I mean, really. Choking someone...with air? C'mon, don't we _breathe_ the stuff?"

"Remind me, later, to go over the finer points of oxygen toxicity with you," Marcie rebutted with a weary sigh.

Stone puffed up and glared at the girl with a look that was equal parts intellectual insecurity and annoyance. "Nevermind! Just...stand over there, and let me do my job!"

She did as she was told, saying, as she walked over to the other side of the office, "I thought I was doing you a favor by bringing the first kidnapped team here."

"My people would've handled that," Stone sniffed. Upon seeing Bucky stroll in, he asked the deputy, "Are they finished getting the kids' statements?"

"Yes, sir, Sheriff," Bucky said. "We're done getting the caterers' statements, too."

"All right," Stone said, not looking up from his paperwork. "You wanna do me a favor and escort little Miss Snoop from my office, please?"

Bucky looked around, scanning the room for any sign of who his boss asked him to eject.

"I don't see anybody named Miss Snoop, here, Sheriff," he said, simply.

The sheriff sighed and pointed irritably in Marcie's direction.

"Oh!" Bucky said, comprehending. He amiably approached her.

"Sorry, Marcie, but you have to go, now. The sheriff is very busy," he told her.

"Yeah, I know," Marcie said, coolly. "That crossword puzzle's not going to solve itself."

A low growl of angry guilt came from Stone's direction.

Bucky gave an understanding chuckle. He knew how they were when they were at loggerheads. "I know it seems like the sheriff doesn't like what you're doing, but he appreciates it."

Marcie crossed her arms, refusing to be placated. "Maybe, but I'm not doing this to be appreciated, so I guess that's working. Anyway, when you checked the warehouse, did you or any of the other deputies see a cd player on a desk by the basement door? It had the voice of the man who set all of this up."

Bucky shook his head, deflating any hopes Marcie had for a speedier close to the case. "Nope. We didn't see anything, except some boots stuck in some gunk in the middle of the floor. From the looks of them, we think that they may have come from a costume shop. We're looking into that."

Stone raised his head, catching the two of them talking, and wondered why Bucky didn't get rid of her.

"Bucky!" he yelled, like a displeased parent. "Get over here!"

Bucky turned from escorting Marcie out the doorway, and returned to the sheriff's desk. "Oh! Yes, Sheriff!"

Stone leaned over to Bucky, whispering a warning to him. "You don't talk about crime stuff to a civilian."

"Yes, sir, Sheriff."

"And stay away from that Fleach girl, Bucky. She's a bad influence on you."

Marcie, easily overhearing the admonishment, quipped snarkily, "Well, Sheriff, at least you got my _last_ name right."

Stone, already annoyed at her presence, added eavesdropping to his list of grievances, and yelled at her, as she departed. "I'll do more than that, if I catch you in the middle of my crime solving again! Now, beat it!"

On her way towards the station's entrance, Marcie looked out across the booking area and saw, surprisingly, the three caterers heading out, as well, dressed in their uniforms, although they lacked the luster of something freshly laundered, since these were badly wrinkled and stained.

She began to wonder why it took so long to get statements from them, but then, her attention was drawn away to the emotional scene of the parents of Team California gathering their children relievedly and protectively into their arms.

"I hope this doesn't give Crystal Cove a black eye, tourist-wise," Marcie said to herself, joking bitterly. "The last thing this town needs is to be known for how dangerous it is."

Outside the station, Marcie gave a stretch, and then headed for her car. "Well, one down, two to go," she told herself. "Now, where am I going to find the next lead to find the next team?"

Approaching her convertible, Marcie reflexively looked into it, and saw her next lead.

The cd player from the warehouse, and a folded letter underneath it, sat in the middle of the front passenger seat.

Slipping into the driver's seat, Marcie reached over and placed the ear buds into her ears and turned on the player. The recognizable voice from earlier came forth, full of admiration.

"Well played, Olympiad," he said. "You saw through my riddle to find the clues to get you and Team California out of the trap. You have my esteem. Of course, now, I have to make things even more challenging for you, as a result. I hope you're ready. Read the riddle under the player."

Marcie slid the paper out from under the player and opened it for her perusal.

Team Two's in town, but far from here,

But where they are is very clear,

In fact, it seems quite apparent,

And just like water, it's quite transparent,

Creatures who live beneath the waves,

In these environs, are well-behaved,

If you want Team Two to live a ripe old age,

CH2=CHCO2H!

Marcie sat back in her seat and closed her eyes in concentration.

"A chemical formula?" she muttered, picking the notation apart and trying to remember her _Organic Compounds for Kids!_ cards that she used to play with when she was much younger.

"Hmm, sounds like a...vinyl," she pondered. "Carboxylic acid? No...Um...Wait...Oh! _Acrylic_ acid!"

Then, a thought hit her like a thunderbolt. "Acrylic, of course!"

She started her car up and gave a quick glance at the police station. The recent row with Stone had her thinking that she should give the riddle and its possible answer to the police, so that they could get that much closer to rescuing the other team.

But, upon thinking about the sheriff, she knew that as long as he was heading the investigation, Team Two might not live to see the sun rise.

That sounded like a pretty dour assessment of Stone's deductive powers, but she was only speaking from the most objective of observations from him. Better to try and rescue the kids and face his bombastic wrath, later.

"Time to find another phone book!" Marcie said, anxiously, as she pulled away from the police station.

* * *

_Tanks...A Lot!_ was a factory on the outskirts of town. It shared its manicured lawned, broad-spaced locale with other manufacturing companies, and was the only one that specialized in the creation of specialty aquariums statewide.

Finding its location via phone book, Marcie arrived, got out of her car, and had a good look about the near-empty parking lot. Apart from a car parked some distance from the factory, it looked like the place was closed for the day. It seemed safe enough for her to proceed further.

Marcie could feel the oppressive quiet bear on her, as she headed towards the factory, a long, gray building, and she wasn't sure if that was what made her slightly nervous, or the stark notion that she was walking, willingly, into another death trap.

As Marcie closed with the building's facade and its smoked glass main entrance, she worried that security cameras would be watching the beginnings of a desperate breaking and entering.

She took the door handle and gave it an experimental tug. It opened. And that both surprised and worried her.

Marcie was confident that she was correct in her deduction that this was the location of the next trap, but, unfortunately, she was also fairly confident that there was every possibility that she might not make it out with the next team intact, if she fell short of her budding capabilities.

She stepped in with deserved hesitation, her eyes adjusting to the dimness that the tinted windows of the lobby created. She had a lot to scan.

The dark lobby served as a huge display gallery for the company's product, and, true to their word, there were, literally, a lot of tanks.

There were small fish tanks for apartments and dormitories, elaborate, gargantuan types for businesses and the wealthy, and every reasonably priced model, in between.

Marcie carefully strolled through this museum of cubical containers, walking further into the wide lobby.

She was passing by the vacant reception's kiosk, when the rustle of fabric and the appearance of a shadow erupted from the deeper shadows of the kiosk's center.

Marcie yelped as the gleaming sweep of an axe head flashed over her ducking body. By the time the Glum Reaper managed to leave his hiding place, Marcie had stood up again, heart racing, and ready for the next attack.

"You thought you had me back at the medical warehouse, didn't you?" the Glum Reaper boasted, circling Marcie for a better approach.

Marcie kept a respectable distance from the villain, all the while, studying the Reaper's body for signs of a coming strike. She ran scenarios in her mind of what concealed vials to use against her opponent, and whether she could reach for them in time. Then she looked down and saw something odd.

In place of the boots that Glum wore and lost in the aisles of the medical warehouse, he now sported a pair of dark gray sneakers with white trim and laces.

_'Not so otherworldly, now,'_ she thought, finding herself relaxing her guard a bit. _'He may be dangerous with that axe, and he keeps knowing where I'll be, but whoever this Reaper is, he's just a person.'_

Marcie took another moment to study her surroundings, and more importantly, his.

Behind the Reaper stood a towering pile of huge aquariums stacked into a balance-defying pyramid. If she could make her move perfectly...

She stopped moving defensively, and, in response, Reaper stopped circling, obliviously standing beside the mountainous, acrylic ziggurat.

Marcie eased a hand into her inner jacket pocket, while she gestured with the other, pointing at Reaper's choice of footwear. Reaper hesitated, wondering what her next move was, when he followed her attention to his feet.

"Nice shoes," Marcie quipped. "Casual Day in the Underworld?"

Glum bristled slightly, but didn't attack just yet, taken aback as he was by the comment. Just as Marcie hoped.

The taunt worked, allowing her to slip her hand deep enough to find a needed capsule. All she had to do now was not miss.

"Maybe you can give fashion tips," Glum countered. "right after I send you there!" He tensed for an axe-swinging charge, then leaped at her.

Marcie pulled her hand free, holding a Discourager capsule between ready fingers. She threw hard before Glum could react defensively.

The capsule struck the floor just ahead of the approaching Reaper, releasing a pressurized cloud of capsaicin, the chemical that gives peppers their fiery bite, and artificially produced mercaptans, the active ingredient in skunk odor.

Glum landed in the cloud's midst, immediately gagging from its pong, his axe falling to the floor, so his hands could be free to try to rub the agony out of his burning eyes.

_'Now!'_ Marcie thought, as she, herself, charged, holding her breath.

Through his stinging tears, Glum was completely flummoxed by the surprisingly aggressive move, as Marcie, putting all of her weight behind the slam, lifted him off his already unsteady feet, causing him to backpedal and crash into one of the supporting aquariums of the pyramid.

The huge fish tank slid free from the combined weight of the others above, and Marcie turned around and tore off deeper into the lobby to avoid the frightening avalanche of tanks tumbling around and over a disoriented Glum Reaper.

Marcie stopped her run when the triumphant roar of gravity over matter died down, and turned around to see the settled destruction in her wake.

Concern made her trot back to her trap to check on Glum. In spite of him having no qualms about hacking her to bits, Marcie wasn't as bloodthirsty, and didn't want him to die, necessarily.

Marcie breathed easy when she saw an angry Glum Reaper trapped in a overturned aquarium, which was half buried in others, looking like a hooded pet in a terrarium.

"You look like the ugliest fish in a pet store," Marcie said, as she watched the Reaper struggle with trying to push and lift his prison. "I don't know how you're following me, but I'm sure you can tell the police when I call them to pick you up."

The Glum Reaper stopped trying to free himself, momentarily, and looked Marcie in the eye, saying ominously, "Sooner or later, you're going to run out of tricks, Marcie Fleach."

Marcie stiffened at the mention of her name by him. "How do you know my name?"

"Marcie Fleach," the Reaper continued. "That is your name, yes? It wouldn't do to have your name misspelled on your tombstone, when I lay my hands on you."

Despite her taking the threat seriously enough, she answered back with bravado. "I don't see that day coming, just yet. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some kids to rescue."

"You'll never outwit the traps that are waiting for you!" Glum yelled at the departing Fleach.

Marcie stopped and turned back to him, saying, "Well, at least you've confirmed my suspicions about the place being booby-trapped. For that, I "tank" you."

She turned from his struggles and resumed her walk, marching deeper into the factory, through the lobby, past the offices, where she listened through locked doors for signs of unwilling occupation, and found none, and finally, towards the manufacturing wing of the building.

She approached the reinforced doors, its security keypad smashed and torn half-way from the wall, and gave it a push. It, too, opened to her, and she stepped cautiously into the cavernous work site.

But not before one of her feet broke a laser beam trigger that stretched across the floor, activating the interior lights of the factory.

From her position by the doorway, Marcie could see around the vast room; the machinery, the acrylic shaping molds of various sizes and shapes, the computerized fabrication and lathing machines, tool storage areas, and utility vehicles. Even a high-powered winch could be seen suspended in the ceiling space.

But what wrenched Marcie's attention was the large acrylic cylinder that stood in a far corner of the factory, comfortably wide enough for the two bound and frantic children of Team Washington, who sat in its center, to stamp and try to call out through their gags.

"Hold on!" Marcie called out to them, reflexively. "I'm here! I'll get you out!"

She ran over to the tank and ran her eyes over its clear surface, looking for weaknesses, panels, anything that she thought she could apply enough strength or technology to breach with, but it was seamless, thick and strong in its construction.

The confining tank was as tall as it was wide, and coming from it, Marcie could see, was a thick hose. Its opening was sealed against a hole in the tank's side, near its base.

Attached to the other end of the hose was a large pump with what looked, to Marcie, like some sort of optical sensor mounted on top, which was, in turn, connected to another hose which was affixed to the base of a huge water tank standing a few yards from the transparent prison.

Marcie frowned in grim concern. It didn't take a genius to see that this was going to be death by drowning for the duo inside, should she fail.

Reaching into her jacket once more, Marcie attempted to placate the prisoners. "Don't worry, guys. I'm gonna melt a hole in the tank with my acid."

An echoing voice, chiding her from above, made her questing hand freeze in surprise. "Ah, ah, ahh, Olympiad! Mustn't cheat!"

"Where are you, you maniac? Did you get out from under the aquariums, already?" Marcie called out in frustration, looking up in the general direction of hidden speakers mounted somewhere in the ceiling's open and utilitarian framework. "Besides, how am I cheating? I'm just here to get them out!"

"But this is the Tri-State Olympiad of Science," the voice countered smoothly. "Or, at least, _my_ idea of it. It's a competition, a game, and there can be no cheating in my game. Look over at the side of the tank."

Marcie pulled her hand from the depth of her jacket, and did as she was told. She saw a work table standing next to the wide tank. In her haste to set the team free, she hadn't notice it, but now that she did, she understood that the table, and what rested on it, was pivotal to this death trap.

Mounted on the center of the table stood graduated cylinder three feet tall and four inches in diameter, and near its base was a similar, yet far smaller, hose, pump and water tank set-up to the larger tank.

Sitting on the bottom, Marcie saw a circular, plastic float, slightly smaller than the diameter of the cylinder, that held up a thin, reflective panel perpendicular from the float's center.

"What's all this?" Marcie asked.

"This is the next challenge," the voice told her. "Observe."

She heard a tiny beeping from under the table, and then the pump underneath began to fill the cylinder with water, raising the bobbing float and its panel steadily up its length, until it finally stopped at about the two foot-eight line.

From the other side of the factory floor, a laser beam projector shot a thin beam of red light at the glass cylinder, harmlessly passing through the side of the glass container, and over the reflective panel, at the three foot line.

Marcie watched the laser continue its journey from the other side of the container, finally stopping against the optical sensor sitting on the large pump, starting its heart-rending action of releasing gallons upon gallons of water from the tank into the death-dealing aquarium.

Horrified, Marcie ran back to the fatal fish tank, watching the wet, panic-stricken kids stamp and squirm in their chairs, eyes pleading for deliverance.

She thrust her hand back into her jacket to snatch out an acid vial, demanding in a yell to the phantom voice, "Turn off the water!"

The voice answered back with dispassion. "Or what? You'll burn a hole in my well-made tank? You might want to take a closer look _at_ that tank, Olympiad. It's rather thick. In fact, I'd wager that it could resist the acid long enough for the water fill the tank and...well, the less said about the end result, the better."

"I guess I'll have to take that chance."

"Actually, Olympiad, your charges will. Put the vial away, or I'll keep the water running until the end," the voice threatened with cool logic. "Although it would be absolutely fascinating to see which action would occur first, the melting or the drowning."

Marcie stopped. The realized uncertainty of how fast her acid could burn through the armor-like acrylic against the speed of the water flowing inside with abandon, locked her body still with worry for the kids.

She tucked the vial back.

"Very good, Olympiad," the voice said, satisfied. "Now, if you'll notice, the graduated cylinder has stopped filling with water. That's intentional, because it means that the reflective panel inside has not been sufficiently raised to the level of the laser beam, which you can see is shining through the cylinder and hitting the pump activation sensor, over there."

Marcie, putting more attention on the trapped scholars than on the voice's play-by-play, anxiously asked, "What does all of this mean?"

The voice continued, unperturbed, "What it means, is this. The only way to stop the larger pump from filling my tank with water is to break the laser beam that's shining on its sensor."

"Fine," Marcie scoffed, quickly walking over to the table, and raising her hand tat the beam. "Some challenge."

"Stop!" the voice demanded, halting her. "That laser and sensor are rather special. If you block the beam with your hand, it will still shine through it. Not only that, the laser's particular wavelength will be slightly altered by passing through the water in your hand, and the sensor will pick up on that. In which case, the sensor is programmed to keep the pump running until it fills the tank."

"Then, how do I stop it?" she asked, her worry rising in time with the water level, which was just above Team Washington's ankles now.

"The only thing that will break the beam cleanly," the voice explained. "is the reflective panel in the container. You have to find a way to raise the panel to the beam's path without touching the panel. Are you smart enough, Olympiad? Are you quick enough?"

It was clear that time was against Marcie, and she soon found it hard to concentrate. The taunts and pressure to solve this riddle was steadily shaking her nerves, and her indecision would be costly.

_'I have to take control of the situation,'_ she thought sternly to herself.

The noise and emotions therein were robbing her of focus, she now knew. She reminded herself that she had beaten this anonymous coward before because she believed, no, because she _knew_ she was his better, intellectually, if not morally. She proved it when he offered up lives as penalty for failure, and she succeeded, anyway. She would do it, again.

Marcie closed her eyes and stood still, clearing her mind of the distractions around her. She opened them again and focused on the key to foiling the trap, the graduated cylinder and its motionless float.

"I can't touch the float or the panel," Marcie mused aloud. "But the panel has to rise to the beam, somehow."

The water level now had risen to the panicking kids' knees, and they were letting Marcie know it with splashing stomps of their bound feet.

Marcie absently shushed them and gestured for them to keep quiet, while she thought.

She kept staring at the cylinder, seeing something in the back of her mind, but not, as yet, knowing what it was. All she knew was that all she was seeing was water, flowing in containers, big and small, sitting in tanks for deadly use. Then, her mind suddenly blanked.

And then, Marcie felt the familiar thunderbolt of a possible idea arcing through her intellect, and she gave a nervously hopeful smile. She once more reached into her jacket.

The voice spoke up immediately. "Now what did I say about cheating, Olympiad?"

Marcie pulled out a handful of light blue capsules, showing them, almost triumphantly, sitting in her palm, to the empty space of the factory.

"This isn't acid," she said. "These are my Insta-Ice capsules. I'm going to save Team Washington with a little science project. Anyone can make a volcano, I'm gonna make an _iceberg_."

For the first time today, the voice sounded confused, hesitant. "You're what? What are you doing?"

Marcie stepped back from the table a few paces, plucked a capsule from her open palm with the other hand, and threw it hard against the base of the container. The sealed capsule cracked open, exposing its splashing liquid to the air. Deep, thick ice instantly took root and covered that side of the glass container and table top.

"Do you know that water reaches a maximum density at about 4°C?" she explained. "My Insta-Ice capsules can generate those temperatures, and then some."

She calmly walked around the table, throwing more capsules hard against the sides and base of the cylinder.

"When that happens," she continued. "water on the surface starts to freeze first."

As ice thickened and crawled along the lower half of the container, the water below the float chilled with astonishing speed, began to crystallize, turn to slush, and then harden into thick chunks of white ice that attached itself to the float's bottom.

"And as more water freezes to become ice, the crystals that make it up form open hexagonal forms. These lattices contains more empty space than when the water was liquid. In fact, there's now so much freezing going on, the ice is beginning to expand."

The ice beneath the float became thicker still, gradually swelling in an upward direction, as it stuck to the sides, and conformed to the shape, of the container, miraculously lifting the float and its panel higher along the cylinder's length by inches, as the water level inside the trap tank now rose to the kids' chests.

Marcie strolled over to the graduated cylinder, watching with satisfaction the ice that formed halfway in the ruthlessly chilled water. The top of the homemade iceberg had brought the reflective panel just an scant inch from the beam above.

One inch that spanned the distance between life and death for Team Washington, as the churning water now reached their shoulders.

"And do you know what happens when ice expands?" Marcie asked rhetorically, while she casually raised a hand to the side of the glassware where the ice slightly stuck to the container's inner wall.

The voice said nothing in response.

Marcie smirked in simmering triumph, just as she inwardly breathed a sigh of gratitude towards Heaven, answering herself, "It floats."

She plucked the container on its side, hard, and the impact and vibration was enough to loosen the perfect, little iceberg from the glass. Low density and natural buoyancy took over, and the whole frozen mass floated free and slowly bobbed up half an inch, and then, finally, the last inch.

The panel met the laser beam and blocked it, simply, and with that impetus gone, the sensor instantly shut down the pump, just as the choppy water level made contact with Team Washington's chins.

Marcie looked up towards the ceiling. She was thankful that her solution wasn't thwarted by the mysterious man crying foul, but she was also thinking about dipping him in a vat of liquid nitrogen, and then smashing him to pieces with a ball-peen hammer for all of this misery.

"Hey, did I pass the test?" she asked out loud, with angry sarcasm. The only sounds she heard were the waves slapping against the walls of the death tank, and the struggles of the kids trying to keep their heads above water. The man was probably gone, by now.

"Yeah," Marcie said, disgusted by his lack of courage to remain. "I thought so."

With that headache eliminated, she turned her attention back to the kids' tank, and with a gasp, understood just how close she had cut it when she solved the riddle.

"Hold on, guys! Stay calm! I'm gonna get you out!" Marcie told them, then went out onto the work area, looking for something to get them out with among the tools and equipment available in the factory.

Electric cutting tools, like saws and drills, were out of the question. They were as much a hazard to Marcie, if they had ever gotten wet. The forklift parked in the far corner was too dangerous for the occupants in the tank, plus, she didn't know how to drive it, so that, too, was useless.

It was among the older tools gathered by a far wall, however, that Marcie saw their salvation.

Through the slightly distorted view of the acrylic tank, the two kids could see a hustling Marcie awkwardly carrying two things. An old, metal work ladder and a small coil of rope.

She stopped in front of the tank, and laid the ladder on the floor. Then, she took a length of the rope, looped it around the top rung and tied it tightly.

Marcie then stood the ladder up against the side of the tank, gathered the rest of the rope in one arm, and climbed the ladder. Once she reached the top of the tank, she looked over the edge. From the way the kids' head poked from the surface of the water, it looked deceptively deep from her vantage point.

Throwing the carried rope into the tank, Marcie stepped over its edge, and let herself drop into the cold water, landing behind Team Washington. Although the water had stopped at the kids' chins, they were seated in chairs, and so, as Marcie stood up and waded towards them, the water only came up to her chest.

She reached into her jacket and pulled out her Swiss Army knife, opened it, and then submerged. The kids, in turn, could feel tugs against their wrists before they were finally freed, and then afterwards, their legs.

Team Washington stood from their chairs in a rush, just as Marcie breached the surface and wiped water from her squarish glasses and weak eyes.

"Get to the other side of the tank," Marcie instructed them. When they obeyed, she grabbed her end of the rope and began pulling the ladder up, over, and into the tank, where it splashed near her.

"Let's get outta here before we start growing gills," Marcie quipped, standing the ladder up and holding on to it for stability, as the first team member waded over.

"Did any of out parents send you to find us?" Team Member #1 asked as he started to climb.

"No," Marcie told him. "but don't worry, you'll see them soon."

"You mean, you went looking for us, and gone through all of that, by yourself?"

Marcie waved the concern away. "It's no big deal. After all, in the long run, even though we're competitors, we're all still kindred spirits of science."

Team Member #1 made it over the lip of the tank, and then dropped safely to the floor. His drenched, female partner, expressing as much of a miserable attitude as she felt, dragged herself up the ladder, next.

She gave Marcie a sour glance. "Kindred spirits of science, huh?" she scoffed. "If you were so smart, you could have just grabbed the ladder in the first place, and got us out of there sooner."

Marcie stiffened from the stinging ingratitude while she held the ladder for the girl. Hindsight may have been twenty-twenty, but graciousness was even more apparent.

"Good point," Marcie deadpanned, gripping Team Member #2, one-handed, by the back of her slacks' waistband, and yanking her free of the ladder, to fall back into the water with a satisfying splash.

While Marcie ascended the ladder, Team Member #2 angrily coughed water out of her mouth as she tried to kick and roll herself into a standing position again.

Marcie dropped to the floor, and landed next to Team Member #1.

"Alright, I'm going to call the sheriff," Marcie told him, pulling out her cell phone from her inner jacket pocket, and seeing water flow freely from its speaker.

With a sigh of exasperation, she marched over to where she remembered seeing a phone hanging on a wall by the parked forklift, the boy glancing back at his sputtering partner, and then following close behind.

"Hey," he asked, with concern for his partner. "Aren't you going to help her get out of there?"

"Eh, she'll figure it out," Marcie shrugged.


	6. Chapter 6

The sun was setting as the VW convertible putt-putted back into the heart of town with the precious cargo of Team Washington in the back seat, and a introspective Marcie Fleach making a beeline back to the police station.

She made the call to the police as an anonymous caller, but she knew when she dropped the kids off at the station, some of them would know who called them and who brought the ex-hostages, Sheriff Stone, in particular, so, the drop-off would be brief.

"You really helped out back there," Team Member #1 said from the back seat. "You should come in and tell them what happened,"

"I think it'll be better if you guys told them," Marcie said, as they entered the downtown area. "They may want to keep me there a lot longer than I want."

Team Member #2 twisted her face into a amused sneer. "What's a matter? You're a jailbird, or something? You spend more time there than at home?"

Marcie gave an annoyed glance the girl's way. As much as she'd love to leave her by the side of some lonely stretch of road and let her fend for herself, that jibe wasn't without some measure of truth. She was seeing more of the inside of the police station, these days, and in some cases, parts of the station she would much rather see from a distance, like Stone's holding cells.

But she was finding a peculiarly comfortable groove as a sometime amateur detective, and interacting with police, and eventually, they with her, came part and parcel with this, admittedly, beneficial hobby.

They approached the block of the station, and Marcie, thankfully, saw no deputies standing or waiting in front of the building.

"Okay, guys, we're here," she told them.

Team Member #2 got out first, but #1 slowed his exit from the car momentarily.

"Thanks, again, for rescuing us," he said. "Despite what my partner would say, we really appreciate it."

Marcie leaned back in her seat to address him with a smile. "No problem. Just make sure you get back with your folks, and we'll be even."

#1 smiled back and was about to follow #2 into the station, when a thought stopped him. He went back to his side of the back seat and held something up for Marcie to see.

"I found this on the back seat when I got in," he explained. "Thought it might belong to you. It looks like something out of arts-and-crafts."

Marcie reached over and took the object from #1, and then watched the boy leave.

She turned around in her seat and studied what was given to her.

She had never seen it before and would have known if something like that was in her car. But, given the circumstances of the day, she couldn't fault herself for not noticing it right away.

It was of simple construction. A narrow strip of white paper glued end to end to form a paper loop. Tied to the loop was another loop of tied-off string, and threaded through that, was a key.

Marcie was puzzled by the object. If it was a key chain, of sorts, it was a flimsy one. It had to be another of her mystery man's riddles.

 _'_ _That_ _Reaper_ _guy_ _, again,'_ she thought. She hadn't seen him when she led the kids out of the wrecked gallery of _Tanks...A lot!_ , and the car she had seen earlier in the parking lot was gone when they reached the Clue Cruiser. He would have had time to plant this crude conundrum in the car before leaving the area.

The key obviously meant something. Something locked, or hidden which the key could open, Marcie mused. But what was the meaning of the paper strip?

She knew she had to get out of the area before Stone realized that she had left the kids on his doorstep, as it were, but she remained and slowly turned the paper loop around with her fingers, looking for anything written on it. She could see nothing.

But then, she noticed something odd about the loop. It twisted in the middle of its length before it connected to its other end. Then, she understood.

Marcie couldn't help but smile at the subtly of the message, as she pulled away from the police station, just before a scowling Sheriff Stone stormed out of the entrance, looking up and down the street for her car.

* * *

Marcie moved through the crowds the milled about the corridors, ballrooms and meeting rooms, key, surreptitiously, in hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the PA system announced. "The Crystal Cove Convention Center will be closing in ten minutes. Please make sure you have all of your personal belongings with you before leaving. Thank you."

The crowds began gradually filing out of the corridors and leaving the main lobby in clusters, but Marcie casually walked over to where the last riddle had led her. She stealthily slipped the key into the locked ballroom double doors, gave it a twist, and the doors gave way.

She peeked inside the room. The punch bowl was missing from the caterers' table, as was the laptop on the now moved podium, and everything else was put back in order by the center's staff, hours after the police had finished going over the crime scene and taken down every name.

Marcie noticed something, however. Although the podium was removed from the stage, something else had taken its place.

A large, squarish shape, fully draped over with a wide, dark-colored cloth, sat with a stillness that rivaled that of the deserted ballroom.

She wondered what it was, and the moment she looked down and saw the motionless toe of a shoe peeking out from under the cloth, a force struck her from behind, grabbing her and driving her deep into the room.

The doors closed and Marcie crashed against the floor of the aisle, the paper loop and the key it held, flying from her hand and bouncing under one of at least twenty nearby tables on either side.

 _'That wasn't a security guard!'_ she thought, as she quickly rolled away from whoever had rammed her.

She got up and whirled into a defensive stance, staring into the depths of the Glum Reaper's hood, while the Reaper brandished his axe eagerly.

"I thought I smelled something rotten," said Marcie. "I guess the Discourager capsule I threw didn't discourage you enough."

"It's about time you showed up, Fleach," the Reaper said. "Do you have any idea how awkward it is to be in a convention center, looking like this, and there's not a cosplay competition in sight?"

"How sad for you," Marcie countered, backing into one of the dressed tabled areas, putting herself between them and her opponent. "I don't know why your complaining. I've gotten your message easily enough. I came straight over to end this."

"Oh, you'll end this, all right," Glum chuckled. "When I'm done with you, they'll have to close this room for a week to clean up the mess." Then, he stopped in mid-thought. "Wait a minute. What message?"

Marcie felt almost disappointed with the Reaper, feigning ignorance to gain some weak, tactical advantage over her. "The paper loop with the key that you left in my car," she reminded him with a sigh. "The loop was twisted in the center before returning to the beginning, turning it into a Mobius loop."

The Glum Reaper stood where he was, still staring at Marcie, and although she couldn't see his face behind the hood, she could sense the confusion in his body language.

"Hello?" Marcie pressed, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "You were telling me that, like the loop, the mystery had twists, with the riddles and traps, and then circled back to end where it began, the ballroom where the Olympiad was hosted, where the kidnappings occurred. That's what the key was for. To open the doors so we'd meet and have our showdown to see who'd claim the last team."

"Why would I go through all the trouble to set up some special showdown with you, here?" Reaper asked, taking on a casual pose. "I've been after you all day. _Tanks...A lot!_ would have been just as good a place to get rid of you, as here."

"And why _were_ you trying to get rid of me?" Marcie asked, pointedly. "Were you getting nervous that I was solving your riddles too fast for you to make your next move?"

"No!" proclaimed the Reaper, in a thunderous voice, before pulling his hood down from his head, revealing the annoyed face of Sara Avanti. "Because I didn't need _you_ getting in my way while I looked for my cousin!"

"Sara?" Marcie muttered, standing dumbfounded among the tables. All this time she being obstructed by that fraudulent vexation of the spirit, Sara? All this time?

"Yeah! Sara!" Sara answered in exasperation. "It took you this long to figure it out, with _my_ cheesy costume? Some super Olympiad winner. I guess you really _are_ a mess when Velma's not around."

"Nevermind that," Marcie said, trying to ignore Sara's comment and almost blushing in reaction to it. Instead, she maintained staying on topic, now that answers might finally be forthcoming. "I've been solving riddles all day, and I kept running into you at every site. How did you know where the teams were? I didn't think you had a chance to read the riddles."

Sara scoffed. "Riddles? What riddles? After I woke up from that punch, I found a folded note in my hand. I read it and it said that if I wanted to find my cousin, she would be in one of three places. Then it gave a list of three places to look. The letter said I wasn't to tell anybody about it, so while my family was still in town, I found a costume shop and bought this get-up with my allowance to hide my identity and scare anyone who stood between me and my cousin."

Marcie looked deeply confused. "So, why go after me? I was doing what I could to save those kids."

"Why? Because you were there!" Sara exclaimed. "You're not as good a scientist as I am, Marcie, and you know it. You had no business risking those kids' lives by showing up and thinking you knew what you were doing."

"Yeah," Marcie scoffed back. "I should just leave it up to some science wanna-be who figures the best course of action is to dress like some mash-up of The Headless Horseman and The Grim Reaper. What did you call yourself again? The Headless Reaper? The Grim Horseman?"

"The Glum Reaper," Sara reminded her.

"Glum Reaper," Marcie said, sarcastically. "Oh, yeah. Truly terrifying."

Sara crossed her arms in satisfaction of her disguise. "Humph. _You_ ran fast enough."

"You were coming at me with an axe!" Marcie defended herself.

"Oh, c'mon, it's just spray-painted plastic and hard rubber," Sara said with a dismissive wave. "It wouldn't have hurt you."

Marcie sighed. "Look, it's obvious, now, that we're both working towards the same goal, rescuing all the teams from this mystery man who crashed the Olympiad. Let's call a truce and work together."

"Sounds like a plan," Sara conceded, warily. Then she looked up at the large, covered shape on the stage. "What's that?"

Marcie followed Sara's gaze to the stage and explained. "I think it might be Team Nevada, but they must be unconscious, because they haven't moved or reacted to our noise since I saw them."

As if in reaction to the statement, the ballroom's light went out.

"I forgot!" Marcie hissed. "The place is closing! Hold on."

She reached into her jacket and fished out her penlight. She switched it on and swung the beam at the stage.

In the dimness, Sara looked anxiously at the shape, while Marcie carefully walked the side steps leading up to the stage.

"Cousin?" Sara called out in a whisper, her mind trying to banish the true reason why the captives were so still.

Marcie carefully approached the possible team, reached out with a steady hand, and pulled the cloth free, revealing two bodies in the dark.

Mannequins sitting back to back on chairs and tied down.

On one hand, Marcie was relieved that it wasn't two corpses that she uncovered, but, on the other hand, she was momentarily confused. Why lead someone with a riddle to a team that, in truth, wasn't even there?

But if Marcie was confused, Sara was frustrated and rightfully upset. "What's going on? Where's Team Nevada? Where's my cousin?"

 _'Good questions, to be sure,'_ Marcie thought while cautiously examining the bodies with her flashlight. Pointing the penlight's beam downward, she saw that on one of the mannequin's laps lay a laptop.

Marcie slowly opened the computer, praying for no booby-traps, and then frowned when the monitor glowed to life, showing her a countdown. From its speakers, a familiar voice issued.

"If you look down, you'll see a mat," the mystery man said.

Marcie did as he suggested. Sure enough, under her feet was a thin, plastic mat. Wires running from its base connected to both a port on the laptop's side, and to something underneath the two chairs.

"What you stepped on was a trigger to your final riddle, Olympiad," he explained. "Underneath the dummies' chairs is a bomb. An _atomic_ bomb."


	7. Chapter 7

"A what?!" Sara panicked.

"Shut up!" Marcie commanded, needing to hear more. The clock read 4:15.

"A small bomb, I grant you," the voice continued, "but big enough to do the job. However, there is a chance to disarm it, if you can solve the last riddle within five minutes!"

Below the countdown, a poem scrolled down.

"Your life runs down with every tick,

Both the bomb and the answer are atomic,

A weighty matter, but if you're quick,

You'll cheat the Reaper, and beat my trick."

Below that, were three small boxes, arranged vertically. Places to put the answers, Marcie figured.

"Good luck, Olympiad," the voice said, then silence.

Fretful, Marcie knelt down to confirm what was told her, and indeed, she could clearly see something boxy and metal, humming low and steady, and looking not to be trifled with.

She then looked up to the sound Sara running pell-mell towards the double doors. She gripped the doorknobs mightily, pulling and yanking frantically at them, praying that they would open and free her.

"What are you doing?" Marcie asked, calmly, as though what Sara was doing was the most inappropriate of responses to a potential bombing.

"What do you think?" Sara asked, in return. "I'm getting out of this Californian nightmare and look for my cousin! Team Nevada's not here! C'mon, let's go!"

"How many people do you think are still in the convention center right now, besides us?" Marcie asked, standing up and studying the riddle on the monitor, trying to dissect its meaning. "The bomb's gotta be disarmed."

"Let me know how that goes," Sara quipped fearfully, still tugging on the locked doors.

Marcie walked away from the seated dummies and began to pace the stage. If not for the imminent death, it would have looked like a scene in a play.

"Your life runs down with every tick. Both the bomb and the answer are atomic," she recited. "Why is the _answer_ atomic?"

She turned and paced in the opposite direction.

"A weighty matter, but if you're quick, you'll cheat the Reaper, and beat my trick," she continued. "Atomic...Atomic..."

Her mind wrestled with the riddle. The connection, she was certain, was the word "atomic," but _how_ did it connect?

"Okay," Marcie began. "Because of the Olympiad, every trap the teams were in had science as a theme, in some way. The first dealt with oxygen, the second dealt with water. But what's here in this ballroom? There's nothing scientific about dummies under a blanket! Ugh! I wished I hadn't step on that blasted mat! If my...weight...didn't... "

_Atomic..._

_"_ _A weighty matter..._ _"_

_...Weight?_

_...Matter?_

_The atomic...weight...of...matter?_

She stopped pacing and froze in realization.

"That's it!" she yelled to herself, almost laughing, under the circumstances. "The theme of the traps was matter! And not just matter, but the _four forms_ of matter! Gas, liquid, solid and plasma!"

Sara, tiring of trying to escape at the moment, overheard Marcie and countered, "Okay, smarty-pants, but the last two traps were about oxygen and water. Gas and liquid. That's two of the forms. Where's the solid?"

"It's me," Marcie answered, simply. "When I stepped on the trigger mat."

"And what about plasma?" asked Sara.

"Superheated matter?" Marcie asked, with a fatalistic chuckle. "Us and this whole building, when the bomb goes off."

"So, what does Captain Crazy want us to do?" Sara asked, returning to the front of the stage.

"I think he wants me to type in the atomic weights of the three trap themes. Gas, liquid and solid."

"Then, go ahead, do it!" Sara urged. "We got nothing else to lose."

Marcie knelt in front of the laptop and tried to remember the myriad of numbers and decimal points associated with the Periodic Table of Elements.

"Here goes," she said. "Oxygen...is...15.9994. Better round it up to 16."

She typed the answer into the first box, then stopped to think about the next substance's atomic mass.

"Oh, no!" she gasped, frozen in sudden horror at her failure to see it in time.

"What? Marcie, what's going on?" Sara asked, anxiously, seeing the confusion in the other's eyes.

"Why didn't I see it? It's a trick question," Marcie explained. "Water _is_ matter, but it's not a atom! It's not an element! It's a chemical compound! It has no atomic weight!"

"So, what do we do?"

Marcie closed her eyes, trying to keep mind on memorized atomic weights. "Uh, we go to the next one. Let's see, that was...uh, solid. That's me. But, I'm not an atom. Oh, wait, I'm made of carbon! Okay, that's...uh...12.0107."

She went over and typed 12 in the lowest box. The clock ticked down to a chilling 1:03.

Marcie stood up and paced again, this time at a more frantic speed. How could she have missed something so basic as what water was? Going from one trap to the other had made her forgetful. She promised herself that if she ever got out of this mess, she would endeavor to sharpen her mind even more than she thought now. Obviously, she was lacking.

Sara didn't pace, but seemed to wait for the inevitable. She could feel the weight of death bearing down on her young neck with every second lost to Marcie's inaction.

"This is my reward for being a supportive member of the family and coming to this Podunk town?" she yelled at herself, then she turned her wrath Marcie's way. "C'mon, Fleach, use that brain of yours! Maybe you can do more than add and subtract, but don't you dare run outta steam, now!"

Marcie turned to face Sara, angrily. She was not going to let this envious, arrogant out-of-towner, this...

Marcie suddenly brightened.

...this wonderful girl, whose loud mouth just reminded Marcie of what she needed to do. She'd kiss her, if she could.

"That's it!" Marcie cheerfully yelled back. " _Add!_ Water's a _compound!_ I forgot to add together the atomic masses of the constituent atoms! Duh! All right. H2O. Two hydrogen atoms to one oxygen. Now, I already know the atomic mass of oxygen, that's 16. Hydrogen's atomic mass is 1. There's two atoms of it, so that's two. So the answer is..."

She thought up a quick prayer, went over to the keyboard, and typed in the vacant box, 18, as the clock finally stopped, as did the girls' hearts, they thought, at 0:15.

Marcie and Sara each took a thankful breath from where they stood, and before they could wonder what they doing in the middle of all of this, the man's voice rang out from the laptop's speaker once more.

"Congratulations, Olympiad!" he crowed. "You've won, so here's your prize. A few parting words. They say "Time waits for no one," but soon, for me, they'll say "For one, no time is wasted," and I'm afraid you've wasted yours. Goodbye, again, Olympiad."

After the message ended, Marcie warily and wearily walked from the laptops and the seated mannequins, and sat, relievedly, on the edge of the stage. With the threat of Crystal Cove, California becoming the American equivalent of Hiroshima past, she began to wrap her mind around the last part of this mystery. Where was the last team?

Sara walked over to Marcie, asking, "What was all that about? That nut tried to kill us."

"He was right," Marcie said, more to herself than to Sara.

"Huh?" asked Sara, wondering if _Marcie_ was also a few crayons short of a full box.

Marcie looked up at Sara and explained. "I think I know why he wanted you to look for your cousin alone. Chaos."

"Huh?"

Marcie brought up her hands to placate her. "Hear me out. There was no one here in this last trap, just decoys. Why give you a location, or me, a riddle, that was only bait to catch us when we came here? Obviously, the kids are somewhere else. Whoever your cousin and her partner are, they're special enough that whoever took them doesn't want them found. That tells me that everything else was a distraction.

"A distraction?"

Marcie continued. "He said it, himself. I was wasting my time. We all were. It was just misdirection. He didn't care about the other competitors, he just wanted these last two, and he set up the other kidnappings and everything else to keep you, me, and the police too busy bumping into each other to see that we were eating up time."

It was showing on Sara's face that she starting to understand what Marcie was telling her, yet she needed to ask, "Time for what?"

Marcie slumped a little, for lack of an answer. "I don't know, but we don't have much time left."

Then, a thought hit Marcie, making her tilt her head to the side in appreciation of it, and she smiled slightly to an again confused Sara.

She jumped from her perch and landed near Sara, then began looking under some of the tables in the area with her penlight. With an "Ah-ha!", Marcie crawled under one table and emerged with her Mobius riddle and attached key.

"What's that?" Sara asked.

"It's the key I came in with," Marcie answered, marching towards the double doors with purpose.

Realization dawned on Sara a second time, as she caught on to what was happening. "Wait! You had the key to this place the whole time, and you didn't think that _I'd_ need it? What if you didn't figure out how to disarm the bomb?"

"Then, you would've had all of eternity to tell everyone that you were trapped in a room with _three_ dummies instead of two," Marcie said, simply, as she unlocked the doors. "In the meantime, let's get something to eat."

Sara, still trying to catch up, both figuratively and literally, to Marcie, as she followed her down the hall, to the lobby, and the exit, inquired, "What? Where are you going?"

"Eleanor's Easy Eatery," Marcie said. "This mystery suddenly gave me an appetite."

* * *

He took another sip of his hot drink and dug into his meal, taking in the surroundings. The restaurant sounded spirited tonight, as it did most nights. It was one of the reasons he frequented the place.

He smiled privately to himself. The tricks and traps, the subterfuge and the wily stratagems, all to bring about a perfect kidnapping, bloodless and tightly executed. He smiled again. He deserved it.

He ate another forkful of his desert and savored the sweetness. The police and anyone else motivated by civic duty should either be too stymied to suspect the truth, or preoccupied with search and rescue efforts, by now. He chuckled at that, for he was from the school of "Better Thee than Me."

Once he finished his meal, he planned to go back and check on Team Nevada. They had to be safe, they had to be secure, and they had to stay hidden, and thanks to his careful covering of tracks and his watchfulness, they would remain thus.

So, it was very fortunate for Marcie and Sara, when they left the Clue Cruiser and walked to the restaurant, that they casually looked inside one of the large booth windows and Marcie instantly recognized Caterer #1 finishing his meal...at Rhonda's Rhoadhouse.

Caterer #1 wiped his mouth with his napkin, then lifted the cup to his lips to drain the last of his drink. He almost coughed it out when he heard a voice issue from behind his head.

"Let me guess," Marcie said, calmly, looking over the caterer's shoulder. "Roast beef sandwich, apple pie, and a cup of coffee."

Caterer #1 turned around in his chair to regard the speaker. He ignored Sara, but his face brightened amicably upon vaguely recognizing Marcie, although he didn't know, right then, if her presence was worthy of concern or not.

"Hey! I-I remember you," he told her. "You're that...uh...school reporter. You find any leads?"

Marcie nodded, casually. "Plenty, but I have to say that I'm surprised to see _you_ here. I thought you said that you only ate at Eleanor's Easy Eatery."

Rhonda, clearing a table nearby, overheard, and voiced her opinion quickly. "That place? What a dive! I don't care if she has been in business for ten years, I can still cook rings around her!"

"Indeed," Marcie added, keeping her attention fully on Caterer #1, "but, I paid her a visit, anyway. Rhonda's right. Eleanor has been in town for ten years."

Caterer #1 tried to remain detached from the moment. He didn't like where this was heading, and he found himself wondering how in the world did this girl put him in a corner so fast with his lie, but his poker face was starting to fail him, and his guts were screaming at him to run from here, _now_.

"Meaning what?" he asked, evenly.

"Meaning that she's a small business," Marcie explained, "and not only that, her _place_ is small. Not a lot of crowds there. Which means in all those years, she'd recognize a few of her regulars. I drove by her place tonight and I asked her if you or your friends had ever eaten there. She told me that she never served caterers, or had anyone that even looked like you or your co-workers eating there. The receipt I found in your van pointed out that one of you ate here. Seeing _you_ here, proves it. You lied. The only question is...why?"

The man's mind blanked and failed to come up with another lie, but his eyes betrayed him, anyway, as they frantically scanned for projectiles and avenues of escape through the diners.

Then, he thought of what was in his hand...

The caterer took the cup of coffee and splashed the rest of the brew into Marcie's face. The distraction was enough for him to bolt from his seat and shove the girl aside so hard, that she backed into Sara, and they both tumbled onto the floor.

He bounded from his table amid the sounds of diners' reaction to the consternation, and flew out of the entrance.

Rhonda quickly went to the girls and helped them get to their feet.

"I saw what happened. Are you two all right?" she asked the girls.

"Yeah," Sara said, brushing her costume clean. She headed for the front door, calling back to Marcie, "C'mon! He's getting away!"

Marcie followed Sara, but called back to Rhonda, telling her, "Call the sheriff!"

Both girls ran out onto the parking lot, both to head for the Clue Cruiser, and to widen their point of view in order to keep an eye on where the criminal caterer went. It didn't take long to spot him.

The caterer was haltingly weaving through the lively traffic of the road, trying to grow the distance between the restaurant and himself without becoming some incoming car or truck's hood ornament. All the while, he was screaming into his cell phone the word, "Abort!"

He finally managed to make it across, when Marcie began to maneuver her car out of the lot. She stopped on the entry ramp and saw Caterer #1 run into the parking lot of the _All's Well Motel_.

"The kids must be in there!" Marcie surmised, as she waited for an opening in the traffic flow, found it, and then accelerated across the road and entered the motel's parking lot.

"Where is he?" Sara asked Marcie, who was looking for the man, herself, and found no one.

"Hang on," said Marcie.

She surmised that she had lost Caterer #1 while she waited to get across the road, so she quickly drove from the front lot and its forward-facing rooms, to the rear lot where the rear-facing rooms were.

The convertible putt-putted up the driveway that separated two of the property's four quadrants of rooms, and rounded the corner in time to see Caterers #2 and #3 hustle two hesitant teenagers, a boy and a girl, from Room #7. They were struggling not to get into the sedan that waited with its engine idling.

"Hey!" Marcie yelled, stepping out her car with a fist clenched and raised. "Let them go!"

Sara cried out when she saw her kin, "Leave my cousin alone!"

The sight and sound of Sara caused her cousin to think more evasively. She stomped on Caterer #3's toes with all of her weight, and then bolted towards Sara.

Her partner, following suite, back-kicked Caterer #2's shin hard enough that the kidnapper feared it would break.

Seeing the two kids flee for the safety of Sara and her, Marcie wasted no time from the distraction, She raised her fist into a throwing position and launched a handful of Discourager capsules between the members of Team Nevada.

They collided onto the concrete, cracking their shells and releasing their pressurized miasma between the Team Nevada and their captors. An incredible barrier of stench and eye irritation met the men when they tried to give chase, giving the team time to reach the Cruiser.

"Get in!" Marcie commanded. She waited until they all jumped into the car, before getting back into her seat and putting the car in reverse.

It surged out of the parking lot and back onto the road, heading back towards the heart of the town.

Marcie took a quick, cautious glance at her rear view mirror, and frowned as she saw the caterers' sedan barrel haphazardly from the motel and pursue them.

"I hope that lady called the police," Sara said to Marcie.

"It doesn't matter," said Marcie. "I'm headed for the police station. I'm just hoping that they're stupid enough to follow."

She took an artery that led back to the main streets of town and almost collided with a police cruiser that was dispatched to answer Rhonda's call from the Rhoadhouse and headed out.

The deputy driving, pitched the cruiser around in a bootlegger's turn, called for another cruiser to head for the Rhoadhouse, and then reported to the station that he was in pursuit of two cars speeding, one of whom matched the description of the car owned by a Marcie Fleach.

Both cars' drivers and passengers were alerted to the wail of sirens, and the sedan's driver was suddenly reminded of the old saying that if one tried to catch two fleeing rabbit, he wound up catching neither.

Caterer #1 had the sedan hit a hard turn into a side street, hoping that the deputy would focus on the VW instead.

It worked. The police car couldn't slow down enough to make the turn to follow the trio, and so, remained behind Marcie and company.

"We're almost there," Marcie announced.

Sara, watching the action from behind the convertible, pointed out to Marcie, "Hey, those guys left."

Marcie glanced at the rear view mirror and could only see the determined deputy. Where were the caterers? If they got away, justice couldn't be done. A non-scientific sentiment, she conceded, but no less relevant.

They were close to the police station when she made her decision.

"We've gotta go after them," Marcie said, simply.

She made a sharp, sudden turn down a side street that she hoped was running in the same direction that the sedan had went when it evaded pursuit.

"What? Let 'em go, Marcie!" Sara reasoned. "The Olympic committee probably called off the competition already because of the kidnappings. By tomorrow, we'll all be going home and those jokers won't touch us because they don't even know where we live."

"Yeah, but those jokers are from _my_ hometown," Marcie countered. "I've come too far to solve this, just to see them get away. Kidnapping's serious business, and they have to answer for what they did."

Sara almost laughed in her seat. "Hello? That's what the cops are for, and last I checked, you're not a cop."

Marcie, focused on evasive driving, stared grimly ahead, then she gave a confident smirk to Sara in response to her comment.

"No, I'm something else," Marcie said, at ease with herself. "I'm an amateur detective."

Marcie checked behind her, and now two more cruisers followed hotly. No way to communicate to them that she was looking for the real criminals, but she reminded herself to get a pair of walkie-talkies later on for just this circumstance.

Sara pointed a lazy thumb at their pursuers. "Hey, "amateur detective," the po-po are still chasing us. I guess they didn't get the memo on who you are, huh?"

Marcie decided not to worry herself by looking at the deputies through her mirrors. She could hear them well enough. "All they need to know is that we're on the same team. And as soon as I find out where those caterers went, I can prove that."

The side streets were all residential paths that would lead one out onto the main streets, so, maybe the caterers took one, went around, and reentered the main streets so they could leave town unseen. It made sense to her. Even if they somehow escaped, their crime would be known to the sheriff, sooner or later. Crystal Cove was no longer safe for them.

Marcie made another turn, headed back to the main street, and experimentally headed back towards the artery that led out of Crystal Cove proper, past Rhonda's eatery, and, eventually the city limits.

Now that Marcie was out on the road, there was more room to maneuver, and was immediately thankful for small town, nighttime traffic, when she saw, ahead of a line of speeding cars, the sedan.

With the police cars easily gaining on her, now that they were out of the confining space of the residential areas, as well, Marcie opened her car up, driving it as fast as it could muster, recklessly weaving past distraught drivers and increasing her gain on the sedan, just as the police cruisers began to close the distance to her.

Focusing on the chase, Marcie fumbled around the dashboard for the special controls of her car near the radio.

Sara noticed the action and asked, "What's that, the radio? I can't tell with these classic cars."

"No," Marcie said. "It's my jammer. It'll knock out anything electronic from a distance. If I can get close to the caterers' car, I can shut it down."

Finally finding the familiar switch, she flicked it on.

The small panel onto of the Cruiser's front driver's side fender popped open, releasing its small radar dish. Manipulating its angling wheel built into the steering wheel, she oriented the jammer to point up ahead.

But more cars were there to slalom through, and Marcie knew it wouldn't be long until the criminals eluded her and the deputies by crossing the city limits boundary. She had to get closer.

Sara, waiting for this crazy day to end, yelled impatiently at Marcie. "Well, what are you waiting for? Zap 'em with that thing!"

Marcie, eager for the same, sighed in frustration. "The beam's line of sight and there are too many cars in front of me. I can't have anything in the way of the beam or I'll hit that. I have to get directly behind the caterers. Hang on."

She pushed her car's little German engine as hard as she could. Only one car was ahead of her and beyond that, was the sedan.

The Clue Cruiser was fast for a Volkswagen, but it couldn't maintain those speeds for long, yet the unwitting blocker car was starting to fall away, gradually being passed by the bug.

So focused was she on catching up with the caterers, Marcie failed to notice that the only reason she was able to get so close to the men in such sort order, on the road, was because of the wailing, flashing, urgent police cars that she herself was trying lead.

The other motorists slowed down in the presence of the deputies, giving Marcie a wide berth. In the midst of a high speed chase, the other drivers collectively agreed that it was much more fun to watch, than to participate.

"Gotcha, now, Devlin!" Marcie said triumphantly when she sidled her car in the lane behind the sedan. Depressing a button nearby, the jammer emitted a focused, concentrated beam of EM energy, which struck and enveloped the fleeing car.

With satisfying speed, the sedan began to sputter and decelerate, forcing Caterer #1 to fearfully pull over by the side of the road, where his car gradually rolled to a stop, just as the Clue Cruiser and the police cars parked in a semi-circle, finally surrounding the defunct vehicle.


	8. Chapter 8

"Actually," said Marcie, rubbing the circulation back into her wrists from the just removed handcuffs, "I led you to the kidnappers before they could leave town. You're welcome."

Sheriff Stone, who had did the cuffing just earlier, still puffed at her, his imposing body, strangely backlit against the silent, red and blue light show of rooftop sirens.

"I don't care what you did, Mary!" Stone told her, mustache twitching in irritation. "I told you to stay out of my case! You are going to start respecting my authority, or else heads are going to roll, around here. Heads that wear glasses."

Marcie ignored the threat and instead watched the three wayward caterers get out of their sedan under the uncompromising gaze of deputies, who were ready to place them in their own cars for speedy delivery to jail.

Caterer #1's glanced over and locked eyes on Marcie. Thoughts of his job and his freedom drifting away from him like smoke in his hands made him curse his luck, and more so, his choices, and he found himself still wondering, if not just flummoxed, at how she figured out their scheme so quickly, in the space of hours.

He stopped just before the open back door of a police cruiser and asked, "How did you know it was us?"

"When I was in the police station earlier today, I saw you three getting ready to leave," Marcie said. "You were wearing caterers' uniforms, but they weren't new ones. They were wrinkled and had stains that were the same color as the knock-out punch that was served during the opening of the Olympiad."

"You told me that you told the police that you three were attacked from behind, your uniforms were stolen, and you were tied up in your van," she continued. "If that was true, and the kidnappers did pose as you and your co-workers, then why would they give the uniforms back to you, afterward? If I was one of the kidnappers, I would've thrown my uniform away."

"Who says they didn't?" Caterer #1 debated.

"I snuck inside your van before I talked to you guys," Marcie said. "True, I saw no uniforms in the back, but there were a lot of storage boxes. Certainly big enough to hide some stained clothes, no doubt."

Caterer #3, being escorted to his own police cruiser, shrugged and said, "I kinda wondered how long it would take for the cops to notice that we just _happened_ to find some old uniforms in the back of the van that we could wear until we got back to the home office."

Caterer #2 chimed in as he was being led to another police car. "Yeah. Just our luck that some of the guests had spilled some of their punch on us just as they fell over. Guess we hoped that no one would notice."

Sara walked up beside Marcie and boldly addressed the criminals. "But that still doesn't answer the big question. Why do it? What could you gain by truly kidnapping Team Nevada? What does grabbing my cousin accomplish?"

Caterer #1 gave a morose chuckle. "Not your cousin," he told her. "Her partner."

Sara had barely gave the boy who worked with her cousin a second thought. How was he even important? He wasn't family.

"What about him?" she asked, dismissively. "No boy's smarter than _my_ cuz."

Caterer #1 gave a slight smile at that. He admired the loyalty of family. "Heh. Sometimes, kid, it's not about what you know, but _who_ you know. That kid's father's a scientist who works for some think tank called Sundial. Some mystery man had gotten in touch with us a few weeks ago. Said that he had a private eye go through our company's disciplinary reports, and found out that all three of us had gambling problems. We'd go to the tracks between jobs, and risk being late to all of those shindigs we were hire to cater."

Caterer #2 added to the confession. What was there to lose? They had already failed. "He said he'd tell our boss that we were doing it again, if we didn't do what he told us. We didn't need to get fired in this economy, so, we said we'd do it."

"Who is this mystery man?" Marcie asked, intrigued somewhat, now that she knew someone else was pulling the strings.

Caterer #3 shrugged. "Hey, we don't know. We wouldn't have called him a mystery man if we knew him, would we? Anyway, we we're expecting a call from him at midnight, telling us that the kid's father had given him what he wanted."

"Which was?"

Caterer #2 spoke up. "His computer and security access codes for getting into Sundial."

Marcie frowned slightly in thought. This was the second time this town had any dealings with that secretive time travel organization.

 _'Why was that?'_ she thought. _'Do we have something they want? Do they have something we need?'_

She then remembered what one of the caterers had said about making contact with the mystery man at midnight. Since the scientist's son was safe, now, and it wasn't twelve A.M. for a good while yet, it made more sense to contact the father and tell him the good news, so he wouldn't have to capitulate to whoever set all of this up.

Marcie took out her cell phone and went over to Sara's cousin's partner. "What's your father's phone number?" she asked him while she prepared to dial. Then, she looked at the dead face of her phone and remember the water damage from earlier.

"Shoot," Marcie groused. "I forgot." She turned to face the assembly around her. "Does anybody here have a working cell phone? Someone has to get in touch with the scientist before midnight and tell him that his son is all right."

Stone stepped up, cockily brandishing his cell phone. " _I'll_ handle this, Mimi. The boy's father's gonna want hear the good news from someone in authority, not some girl who out way past her bedtime."

While Marcie bristled in silence, the boy gave Stone his father's cell phone number. He dialed it soon after.

After a few moments of ringing, Stone got through. "Hello, Mr. Scientist, this is Sheriff Bronson Stone from the Crystal Cove Police Department," he said with his typical bombast. "I'm glad to inform you that my men and I have just apprehended the kidnappers responsible for kidnapping your son, here."

After a beat, Stone replied. "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I know that you want to speak to your boy, but whatever you have to say to him would be in better context if you'd listen to how I was able to figure out the crime...I-Yes, sir."

Stone handed the cell phone to the boy, looking a tad sheepish. "It seems that your father wants to talk to you. Can't imagine why. He should want to speak to the lawman who saved his boy."

After a lengthy and heartfelt talk between thankful father and grateful son, the boy walked over and handed the phone to Marcie.

"I guess he does want to speak with the one who saved his son," said Sara, sounding, to her, strangely ebullient and sympathetic with the father. The fact that Marcie's actions allowed her to see her cousin again might have had something to do with it.

Marcie brought the phone to her head and spoke. "Hello, sir. Yes, sir, I'm happy I could be of help. Yes, sir, I'm Marcie Fleach. No, I didn't want to compete this year, but I'm glad I could still do my part for the Olympiad by solving this mystery. You're thinking about talking to the committee about making mystery-solving an event in the next Olympiad? I'm flattered, sir, thank you. I think that would be a good idea. Good night, sir."

Marcie regarded Stone and was about to hand the phone back to him, when she looked at the quiet crowd of law-breakers, law enforcers and civilians, who were oddly curious about the conversation that went on between former Olympiad and appreciative scientist.

With a modest smile, she handed the sheriff the phone and said to him, "What can I say? I guess I'm popular."

Pocketing the phone, Stone grumbled at her, as he watched her get to her car. "Don't think you've gotten away with anything, Missy. I could've solve the case if I had a little more time."

"Good night, Sheriff," Marcie said, smugly, deciding to let the man stew by the side of the road, and started her car up. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw Sara approach the driver's side.

Marcie glanced up at her. "Sara," she acknowledged her.

"Marcie," Sara said, stiffly, head down and choking on every word. "My cousin wanted me to come over and...tell you that I'm...sorry...for acting like some jealous prima donna during the Olympiad."

Despite Sara's stubborn hesitation to apologize, Marcie relaxed inwardly and regarded her fully from her seat. "Apology accepted. But remember, Sara. It's just a competition. I know it's fun and all, but, at the end of the day, it's not the trophies you come home with, it's yourself, and how you've dealt with everyone around you, and I'd like to think when _you_ come back home, it'll be knowing that you found a friend in me."

Giving her a smile, Marcie raised an hand for Sara to shake, and Sara, too struck with sudden emotion to wonder why this was happening, took the hand in hers and shook.

* * *

Marcie was thankful that the Clue Cruiser's engine didn't alert her father to her arrival when she parked in front of their house. Hoping he went to bed early, as was his habit sometimes, Marcie stepped out of her car.

As was _her_ habit at times, Marcie went over to her backyard laboratory to check on things before settling in for the night.

She sighed and gave a stretch when she reached the lab's door, and had to admit, this year's Tri-state Olympiad of Science was one for the record books. Drugging, kidnappings, cunning, scientific riddles leading into deadly traps, mystery solving and desperate car chases. With a proud, yet mischievous grin, she sincerely hoped that the Olympic committee would welcome the idea of urgent deduction as a new event.

Marcie opened the door, turned on the lights, and went inside. Nothing was amiss.

"Everything's in place," she said, wearily, to herself. "Of course. Why would it be otherwise?"

She turned around and prepared to leave the lab, thoughts of sweet, unconscious states beckoning her to the bedroom, when she thought she saw something sitting on one of the counters.

She turned back, walked further into the room, and saw a large, white, folded piece of paper, indeed, sitting of the counter closest to the doorway.

Marcie remembered quite clearly that she didn't leave any notes on the counter. That _wasn't_ a habit of hers. Any messages or notes in the lab would have been pinned to the bulletin board nearby, because she hated clutter.

Maybe it was from Dad, she mused. Something to do with dinner, probably.

She opened the note, gave a cursory read, and then, she felt her feet cool for a moment from what the missive said...

"You've won the game, although I've taunted,

The children had not what I wanted,

Alas, my obsession was to blame,

For making this a mortal game.

From chemistry to computer hacking,

Your intellect was far from lacking,

The bomb was fake, but not your brain,

And rest assured, we'll meet again..."

Marcie stood still for a few moments, reluctantly digesting the congratulatory, yet threatening letter. Who was this mystery man that she thwarted, what was going to be the retaliation that now hung over her head like a Sword of Damocles, and when was the strand of hair that held it up going to break?

Absently, she pulled out a stool from near the counter and sat, not feeling any better for it.

Questions. Questions were her reward for this night's adventure. Questions surrounded her, and would haunt her. She had to accept that, now.

But although her eyes started to close on their own volition, her mind twisted in her skull, like a pensive animal in a cage, for answers, for avenues of protection. But things would be better tomorrow, she told herself. She just needed sleep. Just some sleep.

Because things would be made clearer for her, more easier to manage...

_Tomorrow..._


End file.
